


Beginner's Mind

by PallasPerilous



Series: Inversions [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Castiel Acts Like Endverse Castiel (Supernatural), Contractor Dean Winchester, Dead John Winchester, Fluff and Crack, Lawyer Sam Winchester, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Cancer, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Castiel (Supernatural), Omega Dean Winchester, POV Dean Winchester, Panic Attacks, Past Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Shiplap, Slow Burn, These tags are super heavy but everybody's a total cupcake, Yoga Instructor Castiel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24738223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PallasPerilous/pseuds/PallasPerilous
Summary: So on the downside, Dean’s dignity has been absolutely atomized in front of two dozen assorted suburban moms;on the upside, Yoga Guy’s pants look even better from a worm’s eye view.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Inversions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841047
Comments: 134
Kudos: 206
Collections: ProfoundBond Exchange: Quarantine & Chill





	1. Downward-Facing Dog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueeyesandpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueeyesandpie/gifts).



> This is a fluffy fic with some heavy ingredients. Tough Stuff From The Past is mentioned, but in the present moment nobody takes anything worse than an embarrassing pratfall (literal and figurative). While this fic does get to the Quarantine theme (eventually), there is also no pandemic stuff, and nobody gets forcibly separated. It's just hormones and feels all the way down. 
> 
> I'll be posting at least a chapter a day this week til it wraps up, and will add some minor tags as I go, but no major content tags are missing. 
> 
> The A/B/O bits here are pretty minimal – really just an excuse for Queer Gender Thoughts, so if you're not usually into some of the more Extra tropes (fangs, eyes, dubcon, feminization, breeding stuff, true mates...), this fic will steer well clear. Props especially to [Jemariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemariel) and [sharkfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkfish) for their super-sweet and thoughtful takes on alt-A/B/O; if you like their work, give this fic a shot. 
> 
> However, if you have problems with sweet-natured Dumbass/Burnout pairings, rants about overdone home renovation trends, hip-opening yoga poses, medical marijuana, Cool Ranch Doritos, or stretch pants, you're on your own. 
> 
> This one goes out to [Sunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueeyesandpie), who asked for it, and deserves everything.

“No,” Dean says. “No fuckin’ way.”

“Dude, either you blow off some steam here, or you start running with me,” Sam says, popping the passenger side door. “You need your walkies.”

“I’d rather kill myself.”

“Not if I kill you first,” Sam replies, and slaps the roof of the car a couple times, like he’s patting Dean firmly on the head. Which is a thing Sam can _do_ , because he had the extreme discourtesy to not only not only turn up alpha, but also two inches _taller._ This should be a capital goddamn offense for little brothers, but he turned up a trial lawyer too, so Dean’s just globally fucked.

Dean groans and kills the ignition, instead of himself. It’s a close thing, though.

* * *

“The _O-Zone_ ,” he says, in a tone most people reserve for saying _“the tumor.”_

It’s just a strip mall gym, sandwiched between a Vietnamese bakery (wow, cruel) and a dry-cleaning place – nothing outright sinister, but the logo decal on the window still makes him want to peel his skin off. “God, it has a _cute name._ Jesus, Sam, please don’t send me in there with all the stay-at-home yoga moms. They’ll eat me alive.”

Sam snorts and socks him in the chest with the gym bag. “Kinda got the impression you were _into_ being eaten alive by yoga moms.”

“Shut up. Go run along the highway and get hit by a car.”

Sam grins and flips him off, then lopes across the parking lot to his fucking running trail.

The options here _all_ suck: some Crossfit cult complex where membership costs $200 a month and probably involves a mind-control chip; a dank little weights gym whose only Yelp review consists of the phrase “great place to get TB”; running with Sam in Nature; and _this_ fucking Omega mommy work-off-the-baby-weight chain gym.

But it’s been six weeks of rehabbing Dad’s old place by day, and rattling around Sam’s cubbyhole at night. He’s too fucking tired to attempt even app hookups, and Sam gets real sad-face when Dean goes out boozing two whole nights in a row, so he’s officially boned for his usual outlets.

And so: the O-Goddamn-Zone.

 _Technically_ he qualifies for membership – it says M/O on the driver’s license, and it ain’t wrong – but it’s always a fucking circus with this stuff. He’s a 6’1” blue-collar butch dude-and-a-half who wears blockers (because he doesn’t enjoy being followed at night _or_ being insta-turfed to the Friendzone). The downside is getting a lot of dirty looks and nervous “ _excuse me, sir, but we’re going to have to ask you to_ ”s in places like this, even the ones with extremely earnest signs about Inclusive Spaces in the windows. This one has three. They involve rainbows and that super unfortunate cartoon handwriting font. It does not bode well.

Leilani at the front desk only seems mildly surprised, though. Once they clear up that he’s not here to buy a gift certificate for his wife, or his boyfriend, or his teenage child (💀), or his fucking parakeet _,_ she clickety-clacks him into the computer system, swipes his card, and tells him to have a nice workout.

Shit.

There’s even a men’s locker room. It’s at the far end of the hall, and it’s small, but it’s not completely terrible – he doesn’t have to blow cobwebs off the urinals. The number of locks already hanging in locker doors suggest he’s not the only dude currently in-house, either.

Fine. Great.

Sam’s going to be unspeakable.

He sticks in headphones and hamsters away on a treadmill for twenty minutes, catches the back half of a vintage episode of Dr. Sexy (red boots era – season 3? Season 4?) on the close-captioned TV. He only collects two and a half dirty and/or confused looks, because virtually everybody who comes through the main floor heads straight to the little glass tank of a group exercise room at the back. It’s a parade of stretchy leggings and rolled up foam mats in pastels and jewel-tones, so no mystery what’s on the menu. _Yoga._

It’s not that Dean isn’t appreciative of yoga; its practitioners have done some _amazing_ things for him (and, more importantly, _to_ him). It’s just that he has a long-held conviction that if he ever finds himself in a pose called _downward facing dog_ he will have to commit ritual suicide.

Dean’s stepping off the hamster wheel to make for the wall of free weights when the class doors open. The yoga-goers (yoga-ers? yogurts?) pile in, and Dean’s left staring at the guy holding the door open – there’s a mop of dark hair and a nice jawline under some scruff and a pair of shoulders so nicely defined that it’s frankly _rude._ The hair is being held back by a stretchy headband, so points off there, but the form-fitting tank top makes up for it and _did you know they make yoga pants for dudes._

This discovery should horrify Dean on a personal level, but as an _observer_ he is struck by a wave of gratitude so profound that it literally sweeps him off his feet. He forgets he’s on a moving fucking treadmill and faceplants so hard he sees stars.

So on the downside, Dean’s dignity has been absolutely atomized in front of two dozen assorted suburban moms;

on the upside, Yoga Guy’s pants look even better from a worm’s eye view.

* * *

The ice pack on his head is kind of pro forma – he didn’t really crack it that hard, just stunned himself a bit. (Dean has taken plenty of blows to the skull, the most impressive of which involved a pneumatic drill and a set of stairs; his brains are already fully liquefied.) The lancing pain behind his left hip is a little less cute, but he’s not about to ask for an ice pack for his ass. Not while this distressingly well-built guy is copping a squat six inches from his face, anyway. The request could kinda come across the wrong way. (It would be _right_ , but it would be _wrooooong_.)

“Think you can sit up?” Yoga Guy asks. His eyes are very blue and his voice is very deep and Dean is very, very stupid. There are too many yoga ladies crowding around for Dean to get a clean read on him – it just smells like bleached floors and omega soup. He is lying on the floor like a some Victorian housewife felled by The Vapors, losing dignity by the second, and he’s literally trying to figure out this dude’s goddamn designation. No wonder Sam kicked him out of the house; he _must_ be desperate.

Somewhere in here, Dean has managed to sit up, but he must have one hell of a wince, because Yoga Guy has a look of deep concern on his wide-set face and he’s clearly scanning Dean’s pupils.

“Can you tell me what hurts?”

“Mostly my ass,” Dean’s mouth gleefully provides. “I’m fine,” the rest of him belatedly tacks on. “Just tweaked my leg a bit. I can probably walk okay.”

Yoga Guy smiles a little. “Looked like you were trying for some sort of advanced tuck and roll maneuver,” he rumbles. The gentle attempt at humor shouldn’t be an exciting development, but Dean’s dick is apparently still on dial-up.

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I trained as a dancer in the Bullshit Ballet.”

Yoga Guy throws his head back and actually laugh-laughs. “Well, you don’t seem concussed. Can I get the front desk to call somebody to pick you up?”

The murder of moms breaks up and drifts back towards the classroom as Yoga Guy levers Dean to his feet. Dean registers the guy’s surprising height – they’re about even, if Dean weren’t in running shoes – at the same time as he registers the smell. The dude clearly doesn’t wear scent blockers, or take any kind of hormonal suppressants. Hell, it doesn’t seem like he uses _deodorant._ Dean is practically fish-slapped across the face by the combined smell of fresh sweat (okay), patchouli (marginal, proceed with caution) and: a whole, whole, _whole_ lot of omega.

* * *

Sam shows up at the front door about ten minutes later, looking sweaty around the temples and absolutely pissed about being robbed of a run by his dipshit diva of a brother. His expression shifts to guilty concern, though when he spots Dean sprawled out on the padded bench in the reception area, flanked by Yoga Guy and Leilani the Desk Girl.

Dean tries to give him a pre-emptive “it’s cool, we’re cool, everything is cool” bro-nod, but it’s a little borked by the ice pack currently bleeding out against his left temple, so Sam comes charging over at 107%. He’s sweated through his blockers already, and the stink of Worked Up Alpha Dude detonates like a parcel bomb the second the door closes behind him.

Sam’s whole grr, arg schtick doesn’t bug Dean normally, because he’s got a photo in his phone of this noble stag clocking in at three foot nothing, wearing Care Bear footie pajamas and half a can of Spaghetti-Os. But Leilani the Desk Girl lacks this crucial bit of context, and as a result she looks like she wants to bolt for the broom closet.

Yoga Guy doesn’t blink, though. Just sticks out his hand and says “Your brother’s going to be fine.”

Sam ices out the attempted handshake (brutal) and says “I’d like to hear that from him, actually,” in Darth Vader Lawyer Voice.

“Dude–” Dean starts.

“Of course,” Yoga Guy interjects, pulling back his hand with a fond smile – as if he’d just misplaced it for a couple minutes and stumbled across it again. “Do you need a ride anywhere? I’m sure one of my students could give you both a lift.”

Sam finally pumps the brakes a little, takes a second to consider the entirety of this chilled out, Spandex-clad omega Muppet standing before him.

“We drove,” Sam answers at last, and he sounds almost apologetic about it.

Yoga Guy nods. “Good. I should get back to my class.” He swivels to Dean on a set of loose hips, turns his back on Sam like it’s NBD to have two hundred pounds of ramped-up alpha attorney staring down his neck.“I hope you feel better soon, …?”

“Dean,” says Dean, thus achieving a new high water mark for this entire interaction.

* * *

It’s 8pm and he’s spread out on Sam’s generous sofa with an icepack under his hip, a can of beer resting on his temple, and an episode of Say Yes to the Dress on the TV (fuck off, Randy’s a treasure) before he realizes: that was the part where he was supposed to catch Yoga Guy’s name. Rough outing for the home team.

Thankfully, Sam doesn’t grill him about the Froot Loop in the headband. He just serves up some joyless veggie lasagna with a side of light ribbing about Dean eating shit on a cardio machine, then shuffles off to his bedroom to Skype his girlfriend and log a few more hours of galley slave duty for the firm.

Two days later, Dean’s back at Dad’s house, peeling up linoleum bathroom tiles so old they probably qualify for Social Security. It turns out to be a pretty gnarly job, because some midcentury psychopath cemented them to a layer of actual tile underneath, and that night his hip starts filling out the paperwork for legal emancipation from the rest of his body.

Dean feels just the slightest bit weird about rubbing his ass all over his brother’s precious purple foam roller, and so three days later: he’s back at The O-Zone.


	2. Extended Puppy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The biggest takeaway for Dean is not so much the actual Doing Of The Yoga – which it turns out is basically pushups and burpees but in sadistically slow motion – but the fact that _the teacher gets to touch you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for a brief acknowledgement of male pregnancy (and Dean being an asshole about it)

Lying backwards on a pool noodle with his junk in the air isn’t Dean’s number _one_ ideal public activity. But at least at (God, the name will _never_ stop sounding stupid) The O-Zone, he doesn’t have to worry about anybody getting the wrong idea. Absolutely nobody here appears to be in Cruise Mode – not even the cougars ’n queens, who at mixed gyms tend to zero in on Dean like he’s wearing a sign that reads FREE MARGARITAS. Here there’s some sort of collective, unspoken non-aggression pact: _thou shalt not make suggestive comments during thy neighbor’s lunge reps. Thou shalt not squeeze thy neighbor’s triceps unbidden. Thou shalt not inquire leadingly after thy neighbor’s evening plans._

There aren’t any narrowed eyes or double takes this time, either: his swan dive off the treadmill seems to have convinced the Mom Squad that he’s a hapless himbo instead of a potential predator.He’s mid groin-thrust, trying to get his left glutes to unclench, when a tiny woman who looks like she’s possibly in her seventh or eighth trimester asks him if he’s _feeling any better_.

What are you even supposed to _do_ with that?

Other than say _yes thanks_ and then help her get the green exercise ball down from the top rack.

There’s clearly some kind of Preggo Meet-up in the offing, because she’s swiftly joined by three more people growing personal watermelons in-house. One is a guy, and Dean tells himself that he’s bailing to the weights area to give them extra room on the mats and to check his form in the mirrors. It is not at all because he finds pregant dudes deeply, _intensely_ unsettling.

“Don’t worry. It’s not contagious,” Yoga Guy says, sitting up from a weightlifting bench two feet away.He’s wearing running shorts over compression leggings today, which is a real mixed bag of relief and disappointment for Dean, but the absence of a Barbie pink hairband is an unqualified plus. He’s still scruffy-faced, but the stubble is the exact same length it was three days ago – this isn’t neglect, it’s _hippie topiary._

Anyway, Dean immediately feels like an asshole, which is what’s really important here. He briefly considers playing dumb and saying ‘ _what_ isn’t contagious?,’ as if it’s not obvious that he just ran in terror from somebody whose current top gear is _waddle_.

But instead he says, “You sure about that? Cuz I drive a ’67 Chevy and I am _not_ trading her in for a minivan.”

This doesn’t get the laugh he’s hoping for. Yoga Guy smiles, politely, and scoops down to put his dumbbells away. “I’m pretty sure,” he answers. Ouch.

Dean’s upper ass meat starts to throb, so he plops himself down on the next bench over, winces a little. _“_ Hey, I was so out of it last week, I never got the chance to thank you for helping me out.”

“No problem. I’m glad you’re back on your feet,” Yoga Guy replies in a tone that’s brisk enough to give Dean heartburn. He sets his weights back on the rack, back to Dean, and doesn’t look up into the mirror.

“I don’t think I even caught your name. I’m Dean, case you don’t remember.” Then he _sticks his entire arm out for a shake_ , like he’s a goddamn golden retriever begging for a Milk-Bone (fuck _off_ ).

Luckily the motion catches Yoga Guy’s eye, and he sees Dean’s tension-locked elbow and wide-open palm and his dumb desperate dog face and takes pity on him. He turns, and shakes, and his hand is large and calloused and warm and the temperature of his smile slowly heats up to match.

“I’m Castiel,” he says, which is absolutely 100% a stripper name.

“Nice. How’s that spelled?” Dean answers automatically, because for some reason strippers love being asked this.

“Incorrectly,” Castiel deadpans.

This catches Dean so off-guard that he snort-laughs, a big reverse goose honk like Sam used to make during that one _priceless_ summer when his voice was changing.

Dean’s sudden outbreak splits Castiel’s face into an off-kilter grin, all smile lines and upper teeth. “Glad my suffering amuses you,” Castiel adds, arching a brow, and for whatever reason that just fucking _destroys_ Dean. ( _Whatever reason_ is eight hours a day alone, tearing apart Dad’s depressive fugue of a postwar 3-bedroom ranch house. Amazing he’s only gone _mildly_ bugfuck.)

So Dean peels forward and laughs, like an adult man this time instead of a vacuum stuck on reverse. Hears Castiel cracking up, too. Then a goddamn knitting needle of pure nerve pain stabs up through the back of Dean’s hip, and he bolts upright with a hiss.

“Here, stand up,” Castiel says, still snickering a bit. He offers Dean a hand and Dean takes it, not so much like a blushing schoolgirl this time, because he’s apparently a million years old.

Dean wobbles upright, wincing and listing to the side a bit – but he must not look like a _complete_ fossil, because Castiel is staring down at his thighs.

“Oh, you’re _prahgatajanu_ ,” Castiel says.

“Gesundheit?” Dean straightens up (fuck _off_ ) a couple more millimeters.

“It’s Sanskrit for bowlegged.” Castiel sketches the wonky arc of Dean’s legs with his index fingers in the air, and the resulting shape is a _little_ too vagina-esque for comfort. (Vagina? Vulva? Whatever.) “Do you experience a lot of hip and knee pain?”

“I fix houses for a living, man – I experience a lot of _everything_ pain. Mostly in my ass.”

Goddammit, that came out wrong.

But Castiel just gives him the basic Polite Social Chuckle, not the full-body dragging Dean’d get from his usual crew of alpha chucklefucks. “You should come to my class today,” he says, pulling out a stretchy teal headband ( _oh no_ ) from an undisclosed location. “We’ll be doing a lot of hip openers.” He pops the headband over his head and it shoves his hair back into into a sort of brown Fraggle halo.

This should by all rights be an _unparalleled_ boner-killer, but lifting his arms to apply his signature Fashion Don’t means Dean suddenly gets a noseful of Yoga Guy scent, fresh from the cow. And what the fuck does this guy _eat_ , what organic non-GMO lab did they _grow_ him in _,_ because he smells like… _fuck,_ like a three-day weekend, someplace woodsy that you bitch about the whole way there, and then you pull up to the cabin or whatever and it’s so beautiful and green and still outside that you actually shut up for once in your dumbass life and take a deep, clean breath that you feel all the way down to the bones of your feet.

It’s like that, but with a _lot_ more patchouli.

* * *

Anyway, that’s how Dean finds himself at the 2pm All Levels Restorative Hatha Yoga class. He _should_ be back at Dad’s place, pestering the granite countertop people. (Dean can’t _wait_ for that shit to go out of fashion, because granite is heavy and fragile and expensive and way too damn cold and slippery for counter sex.) Instead, he’s in a mirrored room full of Omega mommies, face down on a questionably sanitized foam mat, listening to his Weirdest Crush of All Time (Male Division) speak in a hypnotic cult leader voice about _breathing into your hips._

You can’t breathe into your hips. This is an anatomic fact. He kind of _is_ breathing into his hips, though, which is a little obnoxious. The banged-up one is still unhappy, but now it’s sulking as opposed to actively seeking revenge.

Dean’s the only other dude in the room, but so far Castiel hasn’t picked any poses that are socially risky for somebody with a dick to attempt; it’s mostly been solidly planted stuff with reasonably butch names like Mountain and Warrior. The biggest takeaway for Dean is not so much the actual Doing Of The Yoga – which it turns out is basically pushups and burpees but in sadistically slow motion – but the fact that _the teacher gets to touch you._

There must be some vast conspiracy of silence amongst yoga ladies aiming to conceal this fact, probably to keep horny, touch-starved monsters like Dean from storming in and leaving unfortunate puddles everywhere. Or maybe it’s not a universal feature of yoga classes – could be part of the O-Zone’s whole kumbayah, just-between-us-girls vibe, or maybe Castiel is just the super handsy kind of hippie. Either way, he’s almost on a constant prowl through the classroom, picking his way through the jungle of butts and elbows until he spots a wobbler.

“ _May I adjust you?_ ” Castiel murmurs to each of them, and Dean might _honestly_ stroke out.Castiel sets his left palm against one woman’s lower back and gently braces her collarbone with the fingertips of his right hand, and Dean watches as her spine melts from a tense hunch into a graceful arc. It also has the side effect of making her tits look _amazing,_ p.s. Dean is a literal fuckin’ monster.

Castiel, though, might as well be adjusting lawn chairs – he seems totally immune to all the jiggly bits in the room. Dean finds himself devoting a sizable percentage of his mental resources to guessing whether the guy is blind, a monk, or a robot, and he only snaps out of it when he almost misses a pose. Suddenly everybody’s planted back on the mats, and Castiel’s at the front of the room, demonstrating a position that Dean can only think of as _The Angry Pretzel._

The class goes on a long time – by midway through, Dean is sweating big stinky droplets onto the loaner mat and his shoulders are burning from all of the dogs facing various directions. But his brain is remarkably chilled out, wandering off in uncharacteristically benign directions during the longer sequences, then circling back without protest whenever Castiel prompts them to _return to their breathing_.

One of the little butterfly detours his mind goes on is how Dean normally spends 95% of his time on alpha-heavy Crews of Dudes, or in the kinds of bars where alpha-heavy Crews of Dudes go to make Mistakes. Not that it’s exclusive, and not that it’s on purpose – Dean’s pretty good at seeking out mixed company.

But give him thirty fucking minutes outside of the He-Man smog, thirty minutes without having to pass or front or check, just _thirty minutes_ , even somewhere as cloying as _The_ Fucking _O-Zone –_

Thirty minutes, and something so deep inside of him that he doesn’t even remember it’s there – it _unclenches_.

…yeah, okay, hold the jokes. Grow up.

* * *

When the class has ten minutes left on the clock, Castiel has them all lie back on their mats. Dean’s is disgustingly swampy at this point and he’s pretty sure it’s going to wholesale stick to him when he sits up again, but the break feels really good. They get to lie there for almost the whole rest of the time, stretched out like sweaty cadavers while Lo-Fi Hip-Hop Beats to Seek Enlightenment To plays at a soft volume and Castiel reads a passage about _balance_ from something that was probably co-written by Yoda and Mr. Miyagi. It’s real nice.

After they wrap up, Castiel is immediately mobbed by Yoga Moms with important questions about how to condition their pelvic drywall etc. Dean would absolutely slink out, but leaving his mat in this slimy condition would probably bring shame on the village, so he nervously waits in line for a bottle of cleanser and a wipe-up rag. He’s on his third pass on the mat and thinking he should just bring it to the front desk and tell them to burn it when Castiel breaks free of the gaggle and sneaks up on him.

“What did you think, Dean?” he asks.

“Uh,” Dean says, because he was dropped on his head as a baby. “Pretty good workout, actually. You ladies are hardcore.”

Amazing. Calling another fucking omega guy a _lady_. Dean feels a shame-blush break out over his face and chest, so red-hot that it might just transition straight into hives, and he braces for impact – a crushed look on Castiel’s face, a heartily deserved _fuck off, asshole._

Instead the guy just smiles, the kind of small, amused smile you see on all the grownups at the zoo when a little kid calls the tiger a _weely big kitty_. “Very hardcore,” Castiel agrees. “Did we scare you off, or will we see you next week?”

Dean goes boneless with gratitude. “Sure, I mean, if I’m not ruining stuff too much by, like, not knowing what the hell I’m doing,” he babbles, scrabbling to roll up his mat so he can stop polluting the room with his presence.

“Any yoga class that can’t handle a new practitioner clearly needs some ruining,” Castiel says, reaching up to adjust the headband, and Dean gets a full-face wave of Yoga Guy Smell and immediately thinks of at least three other things that need some ruining. “Have you heard the phrase _beginner’s mind?_ ”

“Uh, no. I mean, not as an official yoga thing, or anything.” ( _Thingythingthing-thing,_ say _thing_ one more time, dude!)

“Zen Buddhism, actually. It’s mostly what it says on the can, but you can probably look it up on the internet. It’s something I try to cultivate in the classroom.” Castiel pauses a beat and smiles more broadly than before, like he’s remembering a private joke. “And everywhere else.”

“Cool,” Dean says, and then the 3pm Zumba class starts piling in, so he hits the bricks.

* * *

The Wikipedia article for _beginner’s mind_ , aka _shoshin_ or “a bunch of Japanese symbols that some clueless white girl probably has tattooed over her ass,” needs additional citations for verification. Despite that shortcoming, Dean is ready to accept as fact that it _refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would._

He learns that _the phrase is also discussed in the book_ _Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind_ _by Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen teacher. Suzuki outlines the framework behind shoshin, noting "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few,”_ and that he has used 95% of his cellular data for this billing cycle.

There’s no network connection at Dad’s place, which definitely isn’t an apt metaphor for their entire lives.

Chipping up the old tiles in the bathroom was satisfyingly smashy – Sam even took a couple hours off to help, because busting shit is one of the few healthy male bonding activities they have a framework for. Then it was back to solo time, combing down the adhesive and placing the new tile. He got some actually really nice custom Italian stuff on the cheap, none of that Home Depot flipper shit. As usual this is thanks to Benny’s inability to say no to any client who also happens to be a hot, emotionally unfulfilled trophy yacht-wife, which is basically all of Benny’s clients. (Where does he find them? Where do they find _him?_ )

The tile will do good shit for the property listing, but it seems like a shame to hand it over to whatever suckers buy the place, instead of keeping it for some project of his own. But it’s not like Dean has anywhere even semi-permanent on the horizon. He let the lease on his last crappy rental go when Dad got sick, and now that he’s rendered _this_ house uninhabitable, he’s crammed into Sam’s condo downtown, which is the size of a European molecule and has an HOA so _intensely_ prissy that Dean feels like he should take off his work boots before he steps into the elevator.

Anyway, he spends some quality time down on his knees (yeah, gag on it), mindlessly plecking down pretty tiles, not even bothering to turn on the radio. He thinks about the _beginner’s mind_ thing. He tries to imagine being the kind of guy who can hear the phrase “many possibilities” and not mentally translate it to “infinite problems.” The kind of guy who can wear leggings in public.

* * *

Dean goes to yoga again. He finds out that his hip flexors are tight as shit but his hamstrings are open to negotiation. He hears the phrase “pelvic floor” several hundred more times than he would prefer.

He also discovers that downward-facing dog is less brutal when you pry your shoulders out of your ears. He’s hanging there, ass clenched mid-air, doing his utmost not to embarrass himself in front of Caitlin, Catelyn, and Kate-Lynn, when a warm hand lands on his left shoulder (no whispery “may I adjust you” preamble) and gently pushes it down, out, and away. His right shoulder instantly follows suit and his jaw loosens up too, and suddenly Dean’s just doing something hard instead of something fucking excruciating.

Yoga Guy says _good_ in a way that doesn’t have silent letters spelling _and I expect this level of performance from here on out_ tacked onto the end.

* * *

A couple weeks later, _Castiel_ ( _Yoga Guy_ has been retired since Sam got a hold of it and absolutely ran it into the ground) calls out to him after class is over. Dean’s inner teenager is instantly certain he’s either about to be sent to detention, which always sucked but was at least a known quantity, or asked If Everything Is Okay At Home, which was an existential threat.

He’s not sure what the yoga equivalent of detention would be – horse pose facing the corner? Writing “I will not snicker over ‘plow pose’” one hundred times on the mirror wall? – but the other option is still kind of a nightmare, even though technically _nothing_ ’s wrong at home these days, because Home is officially Over.

Luckily Dean’s body turns around without him and notes that Castiel is just serving up his usual chill Muppet half-smile, so he calms the fuck down and sticky-feets his way over to the back of the room.

“Hey, uh, nice class today,” he says, because that’s how all the ladies initiate their little teacher’s pet chitchats.

“Thank you for attending,” Castiel replies, which concludes the greeting ritual and releases them both into the worrisome territory of unscripted conversation. “I was wondering if I could ask you a favor.”

“Sure, yeah, whatever, no problem,” Dean says, off to a strong start.

“You mentioned you’re a general contractor – am I remembering correctly?”

“Yep, licensed and bonded, all that sh– _tuff.”_ Dean veers off the swear like he’s taking a last second freeway exit across three lanes, because they’re not exactly in church, but the _vibe_ is there. “Got a hammer and nails and everything. What can I do you for?” (Jesus _Christ._ )

“I have a high-up lightbulb that needs changing, and I can’t reach it. I’d like to hire you.”

Dean laughs, because while Castiel has a spine made of slinkies and fresh-cut bamboo and Dean’s is basically a Jenga tower twenty minutes into the game, they’re definitely in the same height zone. “Dude, if _you_ can’t reach it, what makes you think _I_ can?”

Castiel narrows his eyes on the return smile. “Well, _you_ probably own a ladder.”

“Oh, so like a _high_ high lightbulb. Yeah, uh, I definitely have a ladder. That’s kinda more of a handyman thing, though–”

“If you’d rather not, I understand –”

“No no, no, I’d just, like. Feel bad charging you a contractor rate for something that small. I mean, I could just loan you the ladder for free.”

“Hmh. That’s nice of you, but I’d feel better having somebody else do it. I’m _really_ not very handy,” he adds, and then casually peels forward to plant his palms on the floor, a version of which image will feature prominently on Dean’s tombstone.

“Well, you got other talents,” Dean replies, and he’s praying to any God in receiver distance that the Zumba instructor doesn’t choose this moment to roll in and turn on the lights, because he’s blushing like an goddamn anime schoolgirl meeting her first tentacle. “But uh, sure, I can come over to your place, bring a ladder, climb the ladder, do the thing.”

Castiel smiles, a full smile this time but tilting left of center, and then there’s some super awkward business with Dean pulling his phone out of his stinky gym shoes that he’d kicked off by the door and of course there’s a software update in progress, and Castiel turning out to have an Old Person phone that is _just a telephone_ instead of the Starship Fucking Enterprise, so he ends up going all the way out to the front desk to get a pen but forgets to grab a slip of paper so Dean writes his number on Castiel’s actual palm like they’re club kids in 2006. Anyway, Dean and his ladder have a date with Castiel on Wednesday afternoon.

(Not that kind of date.)

(…wait, right?)

( _Fuck!!_ )


	3. Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The interior is a little tragic, and that’s coming from Dean, a guy who currently takes naps on the same couch he lost his virginity on.

Castiel lives several increasingly tony suburbs over from Dad’s place, not too bad of a drive, but Dean still drives Dad’s angry monster of an SUV over so he doesn’t have to risk banging up the Impala’s paint job or upholstery. He neglected to ask just _how_ high this _high-_ high lightbulb is, so he brings one that’s tall enough for him to replace the star on the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center if he has to. He’s pretty sure omega gym yoga instructors don’t make enough to afford McMansions with twenty-foot ceilings in the atrium, but who knows: maybe the guy’s a…whatever the Sanskrit word for _trustafarian_ is.

The place Dean pulls up to is definitely not a humble Yoga Shack. It’s a big ugly white wedding cake propped up on some of those stupid faux-Georgian columns that everybody with more money than sense went nuts for in the 80’s. This house could eat Dad’s little ranch for lunch and pick its teeth clean with the fence posts. _Whee._

Dean leaves the ladder in the trunk and hoofs it up to the front door, trying not to look like he’s there to steal the mail. He punches the doorbell and sounds so far away that it probably has its _own_ doorbell.

A few centuries go by, and Dean starts to freak out that maybe he has the wrong address, or maybe he’s an idiot and is accidentally one street over or something, so he goes to cross-check the address against the GPS map on his phone and then realizes he could just _call_ Castiel, like an actual fucking adult who was born in the ‘70s.It gets through half a ring before Castiel picks up. “Hello?”

“Hey, Castiel, it’s Dean. I-”

“Dean! I’m so sorry, are you waiting out front?”

“Uh…I think so?”

“I’ll be right there.”

A minute later, Dean hears his name off to the side – Castiel’s standing in the Red Sea-sized driveway. He’s wearing some kind of open-necked tunic-y business, a pair of what society insists we call _lounge pants_ , and some of those “for each pair sold, we send a pair to barefoot children in Antarctica” slip-ons. Without the headband his hair has transitioned from Standard Muppet straight on to the Full Fraggle and god-fucking-dammit it’s all so cute that it makes Dean want to slap him, just not on the face.

“I’m actually around back,” Castiel says, bizarrely out of breath. Did he _jog_ down the driveway? “I forgot to mention. Did you wait long?”

* * *

“Around back” is an honest-to-god poolhouse, something Dean could’ve sworn only existed in porn. It looks like it’s about the size of a decent studio with a 3/4 bath, but it’s mostly hidden behind some lattice work that’s being slowly digested by a massive wisteria. He guesses (hopes) it’s been upgraded to an official ADU – Dean’s converted a few workshops and garages and knows what a pain in the dick it is to get the zoning and permitting for those suckers, but it’s just _nicer_ when nobody dies from carbon monoxide poisoning. Good for a little extra income, too, if you rent it out.

Not that these people would seem to need it. The pool is a high-end modern install for somebody who really likes aggressively doing laps, not one of those old kidney-bean shaped family pools, and Benny would absolutely shit himself over the tiling. (God, sometimes Dean feels like a lame home improvement version of the Terminator, seeing computer read-outs superimposed over every trendy fixture and outbreak of shiplap. Sam won’t even watch horror movies with him anymore because somebody will stick their arm down a garbage disposal and when the gore starts flying Dean’ll say “that model’s not batch-feed, it’s continuous” and apparently that’s No Fun. Sam should try watching _The Good Wife_ with himself sometime.)

Dean follows along behind as Castiel pads along a tile pathway, through a bunch of giant cement planters and around a cedar-plank hot tub. “So you don’t live in the, uh, big house?”

“No, not usually. I house-sit sometimes, when the owners are at one of their other homes.”

“Nice gig,” Dean says, as politely as possible.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you.”

This is said in a distinctly sarcastic tone, hell, edging on actually _bitter,_ with a subtle upper notes of resignation. Dean is something of a Shitty Vibes connoisseur, and getting this one from Castiel feels like being two courses in at a vegan restaurant when somebody suddenly serves you a perfect steak.

“Family?” Dean dares.

Castiel reaches the pool house door and half turns around as he shoulders it open, arches one brow with – ugh, it’s too good – _cynical fatigue._ “How _did_ you guess,” he says.

Dean does his best to suppress a shiver.

* * *

The interior is a little tragic, and that’s coming from Dean, a guy who currently takes naps on the same couch he lost his virginity on. There’s a futon mattress (of course) on the floor, half-buried under a bunch of funky thrift store quilts and weird orthopedic pillows. An IKEA dresser, a coffee table that appears to also be the everything-else table, a couple of those hard little meditation pouf thingies for sitting on. The floor is Marmoleum and the kitchenette is builder’s grade stuff, a glass-top range with no oven below, a countertop microwave and a dorm room minifridge. The bathroom’s presumably behind the little lightweight pocket door. The walls sport one tapestry, as required by hippie law, and the rest is all unframed kid art. It tracks a smooth transition from finger-painting blobs up to carefully markered anime girls with their hands demurely concealed behind their backs, because hands are really fuckin’ hard to draw.

The ceiling, along with its three entire recessed light fixtures, is low enough for him – and therefore Castiel – to touch.

Dean doesn’t get terribly long to take this all in, though, because five seconds after he steps in he’s positively body-slammed by the Castiel Signature Scent(tm) again. It feels kinda like being ambushed by a giant fucking dog that is just _so_ happy to see you. One minute you’re the dominant species on the planet and the next you’re plastered against the wall with a gluey tongue in your ear and a huge wet nose punting your junk up into your ribcage. Some deep purple incense is doing its absolute best to pull the smell back by the collar and apologize for its behavior, but it’s a lost cause.

And, look, Dean is _really_ not one for woo-woo scent descriptions – nobody _actually_ smells like fresh rain or cinnamon rolls or whatever the fuck to him, they mostly just smell like…what they are: horny-ass alpha, omega on suppressants, you know, _just the facts, ma’am_. Sam smells kind of like band-aids when he gets worked up, Dad smelled like hot pennies when he was about to blow a gasket, and that’s about as specific as things get for him. But here Dean is, absolutely _huffing_ this alpine fuck-cabin atmosphere again, frantically trying to remember what language he speaks before this gets too weird.

“Who’s the artist?” Dean stutters, because asking about kid art is a bullet-proof redirect when somebody’s having a Moment.

“That’s Claire,” Castiel answers, sauntering over to the kitchenette and flipping on an electric kettle. He says it fondly and his expression softens, but he stops there.

“I’ve got a little brother,” Dean’s genius brain contributes.

“The one who picked you up at the gym?” Cas keeps his eyes diplomatically averted, pulls a couple of mismatched mugs out of the single cabinet.

“ _Right._ Yeah. That’s him. Forgot you already met.” Dean’s urgent need to be wiped from the face of the earth is reaching a new peak here; a nice timely gas explosion would do the trick. Fuck, that’s not gonna happen, this place runs on electric. Probably doesn’t even have a line, it’s a _poolhouse._

“He’s not that little.”

Dean rubs at the back of his neck. “Yeah, no. I guess he still kinda is in my head, though. He was a total squirt til he presented, then he grew like a foot overnight. It was like watching a werewolf movie.”

“I imagine that changed the family dynamic.”

Dean scoffs. “Yeah. Li’l bit.” The one good thing he got out of that particular shitshow of a summer was learning how to frame busted doors and glaze new window panes.

“Mint?”

Dean blinks.

“Tea.”

“Oh. Uh. That’s cool, I’m not really a tea…person.”

“Ah. I’d offer you coffee, but I don’t drink it, and I don’t have enough guests to justify keeping any.” Of course he doesn’t drink coffee. Castiel probably wakes up at dawn and energizes with nude sun salutations _fucking goddammit Dean._

Dean flaps his hand to wave off the offer and also the image. “Don’t worry about it, man. It’s closer to beer o’clock, anyway.”

“Ha. Afraid I don’t drink, either.” Yep, saw that one coming from a mile away. “How do you feel about water?”

“I love water. Shower in it every morning.” That one wasn’t bad, although the wink at the end maybe put it over the line a bit. Castiel condescends to a dry chuckle and puts the second mug back in the cabinet. Dean feels like the timer on his welcome is getting down to single digits, so clears his throat like that’s actually a thing and says “So, uh, where’s this light bulb of yours?”

The brief look of disappointment that crosses Castiel’s face is gonna haunt him forever.

* * *

It’s a motion sensor light mounted on the outside, kinda deep into the wisteria so Dean’s not sure how useful it could possibly be. Maybe if you waved your hand directly in front of it, it would flick on. He does, but it doesn’t, so he leaves Castiel standing in the pool house doorway with his mug of leaf-water and heads back down the driveway to get his hilarious overkill of a ladder.

He’s halfway to the sidewalk when a giant black SUV with tinted windows roars in off the street and bull-runs right at him like it’s gunning for a gooey new hood ornament. Dean yelps and throws himself against the fence, landing a pissed-off smack to the passenger-side mirror that flips it in on the hinge. He barely has time to peel himself out of the ivy before the window rolls down and reveals a human egg rocking a pair of mirrored aviators. (How many reflective surfaces does one man need?)

“What the fuck are you doing on this property?” Egg Dude snaps. “You’re on camera, by the way, asshole. I’ve got you on trespassing and property damage.” A wave of AC-chilled and cologne-tinted alpha funk belatedly hits Dean in the face, in case he had any doubts. This is the kind of pheromonal onslaught that would persuade any rational O to roll over, but Dean is either a medical miracle or just a massive shithead.

“ _What_ fucking property damage?” (He’s a massive shithead.)

Egg Dude silently raps his knuckles on the mirror, now flush against his door.

“You’re fucking kidding me, dude.”

“Try me, _dude,_ ” Egg Dude spits back. “Throw in the _possession_ charge and you’ll have ten years to consider exactly how much I’m _kidding_.”

“Poss– of _what?_ I’m here to fix a _lightbulb.”_

 _“_ Our _housekeeper_ will be fascinated to hear that.”

“Castiel is the one who–”

“Nobody by that name lives here,” Egg Dude cuts him off, his whole deal going so frosty so fast it’s amazing Dean can’t see his breath.

“The fuck – he lives in your fucking poolhouse. I can go get h–” Dean throws an arm in the direction of the pool house

“You can leave right now is what you can do. There’s a patrol car already en route. And I’ve taken down your license plate number, by the way, and I’ll be forwarding it to the neighborhood watch team.”

Dean is just at a fucking loss, here, suspended between dumbass punchback rage and total bafflement. He’s pretty sure he manages to choke out “Fine, fuck you,” before marching down to Dad’s truck and slamming himself inside. He pounds the lock down and burns rubber all the way to the next faceless suburb. He pulls into the parking lot of what must be the eighteenth Starbucks and digs his cellphone out from where it’s trapped under his ass. There are two missed calls from Castiel Yoga (… _really_ gotta find out that last name) but no voicemail or text, which is kind of amorphously stressful. Dean calls him back, but Castiel fails to pick up, and the nice robot lady informs Dean that the voicemail inbox for this user has not been set up.

Dean buys a rage coffee inside, calls a couple more times while he progressively ruins it with even more sweetener than _he_ can tolerate. He’s not sure if he’s worried or pissed or just freaked out, but those are all feelings that respond well to bashing the crap out of some drywall, so he drives back to Dad’s place and does that until Sam texts to threaten him with the prospect of a cold slice of veggie lovers pizza for dinner.

* * *

So, naturally, the day after this weird fiasco, Dean finally gets the work permit approved for replacing the sewer line connection. Normally he’d call in the Cuevas crew and leave them to it, but Jesse and Cesar are off on some bonkers omega-exclusive cruise – Dean struggles to think of a _more_ horrifying vacation concept – so he has to go a few cards deeper in Dad’s thumb-stained rolodex and winds up with Gordon. He does flawless work when you sit on top of him, but he’s a fucking cowboy if you don’t, and he’s one of those aggro beta guys who’s always looking for something to pick a fight about. Awesome.

So Dean misses class, then misses it again, and he hasn’t heard anything back from Castiel and doesn’t want to cross into stalker territory by calling him again, but he also doesn’t want him to think Dean’s avoiding him, etc etc Dean is a thirteen year-old girl. He’s not sure if he wants to apologize (for what?) or check that Castiel’s okay (like he can’t take care of himself?) or just clear up _what the actual fuck._ Dean has been accused of just about every known misdemeanor at some point, and _justifiably_ accused about, oh, 30% of the time, but he’s never been profiled as a home delivery drug dealer before, so it seems like _that’s_ coming from somewhere very specific. He’s not exactly clutching his pearls at the possibility that _Castiel_ isn’t the name spelled out in big felt letters on the guy’s Christmas stocking, or that he might occasionally accept a uh, _pharmaceutical_ delivery, but the whole thing was just…weird. It was weird, right?

“Yep, sounds weird,” Sam agrees, entirely to get Dean to shut up and get off camera.

“Super weird,” Eileen agrees, from Sam’s laptop. _She_ actually _means_ it, because Eileen is cool. Eileen’s overall coolness is the main reason why Dean didn’t immediately bail to a motel after discovering that, while _she_ can’t hear the noises Sam makes on their Wednesday night Skype-sex dates, Dean absolutely _can_.

“Are you going back to his class?” she asks.

* * *

Dean goes back to his class.

He arrives kinda late, takes the Shame Spot back by the gross loaner mats. To judge by the angles of their butts and heels, they’re already warmed up and a few cycles in. Castiel is cycling along with them instead of just narrating, and has his head too far down to spot Dean’s entrance. Dean unpeels the mat Sam swears he only uses for body-weight workouts and does his best to pop into downward-facing dog without dislocating his hip. He’s pretty well bricked in behind the Great Wall of Karens so Castiel doesn’t make it back to him for any adjustments – at least that’s what Dean hopes the reason is.

He suffers through an hour of evil core shit named after zoo animals followed by the sinister combo of Happy Baby and Corpse, and then it’s go-time. Dean boldly windmills his way through the throng of ladies who smell like 401(k) plans and orthodontia.About two thirds of the way in, they voluntarily part before him and Dean is suddenly in the Appalachians getting a blowjob from a patchouli meadow.

“Dean,” says the meadow, looking both freaked out and relieved below a jungle-print headband, “I’m _so_ glad you came.”


	4. Plank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean shakes his cup a little to recirculate the sugar slurry. “So Castiel, that’s, like…your…yoga name?” Castiel glowers at him. “C’mon, man, cut me some slack. I know lots of stuff about Dremels.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some discussion of mental health-related family law, sex discrimination, and the medical connections between the two. (Don't worry, there's also flirting)

Castiel buys Dean a coffee at a mumsy little café four doors down in the strip mall. Castiel insists on paying, which makes Dean profoundly nervous – in part because he hates being treated like the chick (which is dumb, Castiel isn’t doing that, and also: nobody is gonna look at the guy standing _next_ to the guy in purple leggings and think, “ah yes, _that_ one’s the girl”).

But mostly because while Dean isn’t exactly rolling in it these days, last week’s thrilling encounter made it clear that teaching yoga at a franchise gym thirty feet off the state highway is _not_ just Castiel’s side gig. And, maybe more to the point, even if there _is_ a trust fund keeping the dude in Spandex blend pants, it’s got so many strings attached that it might as well be fringed.

Cas orders himself a literal cup of hot water – somebody just shoot Dean in the face already – and slides into the dreaded Comfy Couch Corner while Dean is anxiously dumping enough fake sugar in his coffee to give a lab rat instant pancreatic cancer. Dean turns around to find himself facing a Sophie’s choice of sexual tension scenarios: taking the overstuffed love seat ( _eye contact!_ ) or squeezing next to Cas on the couch ( _thigh contact!_ ).

Dean sits on the couch, because fortune favors the bold, and there’s more lumbar support.

Cas sips from his goddamn water. “I’m so sorry about what happened, Dean. I tried to call you back again, but I ran out of minutes.” (Who the fuck still has _minutes._ )

“Nah, don’t, uh. Don’t worry about it. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. And, you know. That somebody got that lightbulb fixed for you.”

Castiel winces out a smile. “Yes. My uncle got the groundskeeper to replace it.”

“Was that your uncle I…uh, met?”

“My aunt’s husband, yes.”

“Seems like a real peach.”

Castiel snorts, so Dean adds, “He kinda looks like one, too.”

Castiel laughs with teeth.

* * *

“Jimmy,” Castiel says. There’s not a lot to look at in the empty lot behind the strip mall, just chickweed and rusty fencing, but the muzak was starting to make Dean’s ears bleed and the highway noise is a genuine improvement. “My legal name is still James.”

Dean blinks. “Oh. Yeah, I hear changing those is a hassle.”

“Family members? Yes.”

Dean cackles. “You,” he says, “are actually pretty fucking funny under all that namaste crap.”

Cas scrunches up his face in mock offense. “It’s not crap. And I’m not funny _under_ it. Namaste ‘ _crap’,_ ” (wow, air quotes) “is how I’ve gotten to the point where I _can_ joke about it.” He takes another sip of his hot water, which by now is just water-water. “I suspect that’s part of why they don’t like Castiel.”

Dean shakes his cup a little to recirculate the sugar slurry. “So Castiel, that’s, like…your…yoga name?” Castiel glowers at him. “C’mon, man, cut me some slack. I know lots of stuff about Dremels.”

“No, but I stopping being Jimmy around the same time that I began practicing seriously. It was part of a…very difficult life passage for me. They like to pretend it never happened.”

“Yeah. Our dad tried to pull that when my brother moved back here, and it didn’t work out too good. So’s all that’s why you’re, like. Literally in the doghouse?”

“No, I live out there because I’m not medicated, and some of the family find my cycles distracting.”

“Seriously? That’s…c’mon. That’s like kindergarten logic. It’s not fuckin’ cooties.”

Castiel shrugs; he’s wearing one of those loose, T-back tank tops that normally only flip-flop beachbros think they can get away with, but the amount of visible collarbone action is really moving the needle for Dean. “It’s their home. Logic isn’t required.”

“So, what, if you took suppressants, they’d let you in to use the dishwasher?”

“Something like that. But I’ve come to appreciate having my own space.”

Cas begins to walk back towards the pavement strip, and Dean follows, dumping his gross coffee out on the chickweed.“Why not go on supps, though? Don’t you miss a lot of work during heats? You could save up for a deposit somewhere else–” Dean doesn’t realize that’s he’s drifted way out of his lane and all the way up onto the median until it’s too late – Castiel’s face crumples in on impact.

“I’d miss a great deal more work if I took them,” Cas replies, tightly. “And legally I’m not allowed to live apart from my family right now.”

They’re stalled maybe ten feet down from the gym doors, and the nice omega ladies are emerging from their minivans and SUVs, hoisting mat bags and reusable ceramic travel mugs and a bunch of other stuff that they could use to beat Dean to death for the crime of making the yoga teacher cry.

“Oh, fuck. I’m sorry. It’s not my business, I’m just, you know. Some assho-”

Castiel makes a frustrated noise and plants his palm smack on the middle of Dean’s chest, and it might as well be one of those shocker paddles doctors use on heart attack patients.

“You’re a compassionate person, Dean,” Cas says. “Don’t apologize for that.”

They stand there, just like that, well past the point where it _should_ feel awkward, which is to say longer than .0001 seconds. It’s such a trippy fucking moment that Dean doesn’t even break things up with a stupid joke or a pained glance to whatever is currently occupying the middle distance. Cas just gently lifts his hand up and moves it to gently grip the side of Dean’s shoulder, where it is borderline socially acceptable.

“I still would like to make things up to you for last week. Would you please consider letting me pay you for your time, at least?”

Dean would shrug, but then the hand might leave his shoulder. He likes the hand on his shoulder. Is _he_ going to fucking cry? He has no clue why he would, but his throat is aching and he’s suddenly worried about the possibility. “Nah.”

Cas breathes out through his nose, exasperated but not pissed.

“I’ve, uh. Tell you what,” Dean manages. “I’ve got a work party on Saturday. At my dad’s old place, I’m fixing it up to sell it.”

“Oh. I don’t want to get in the way.”

“I can just give you a big hammer and you can help me smash some shit. Or there’s more Zen stuff to do, too, whatever. I’m drowning basically.”

“Alright, then,” Cas says. “I will gladly help you smash some shit.” He squeezes Dean’s shoulder once, and then lets it go.

“Awesome,” says Dean. And it actually is.

* * *

“Maybe he’s a conservatee,” Eileen says.

“Is that like a manatee that votes Republican?”

Eileen squints at him. “I didn’t catch the first part of that, but I’m guessing it was a dumb joke.”

Dean fingerguns in reply (hopefully it doesn’t mean something kinky in Actual Sign Language) and Sam rolls his eyes and tries to snatch the laptop back. Eileen keeps talking out of the speakers as Dean skiis the computer down the length of the pretentious glass coffee table. “LPS conservatorship. It’s…”

Dean plops back down. “Oh shit, is that the–”

“It’s the Britney thing,” Sam and Eileen say in unison.

“Well, shit.”

Eileen frowns and tucks her hair behind an ear. “It’s mostly for people with severe mental illness or disability. Like psychosis or dementia, or an extreme developmental delay. Usually it’s somebody who needs to be institutionalized. The conservatorship is just for thirty days initially, but after that it can be renewed for a year at a time. It’s a really big hassle, though.”

“Like what kind of hassle? His family’s loaded, they could definitely afford lawyers.”

“Professional evaluations, investigations…it’s really not _that_ common, though. I mean, I’ve worked a ton of cases at this point, and only a few families have to use it.” Eileen pauses, and then her face tightens up a little. “It _does_ happen to omegas more often. Historically.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s kind of controversial these days, but if you’re diagnosed with estral dysphoria–”

“ _Are you fucking kidding me_ ,” Dean says, then realizes his hand is clutched over his mouth. He shoves it into his hair instead, to keep it out of trouble. “Fucking… _hysteria_?”

Eileen shrugs defensively. “It’s controversial. It gets pulled out more for omegas who have really bad psychiatric reactions to longterm suppressants, not so much for unmedicated people with heat psychosis. But if you get the right judge, the right experts, it can still happen.”

“That’s,” Dean says, then just goes dead in the water.

“It’s fucked up,” Eileen nods. “I hope that’s not what your, um, friend is dealing with. If he is, I can ask who my firm partners with for cases in your state…”

“No, it’s… I mean, he seems fine. He hasn’t, like, slipped a ‘help me’ note or anything. I was just…”

“Horny,” says Sam, as Eileen says “Concerned.”

“I like her better,” says Dean.

“So do I. Can I have my girlfriend back now?” Sam asks, making grabby hands.

Dean cranes the laptop further away. “I’ll give her back if you come to the work party on Saturday.”

“ _What_ work party?”

“The one I’m having on Saturday. Need you to be my ringer.”

“Who the hell did you even _invite?_ ”

“I have friends!”

“None of them work for free.”

“So I’ll pay them. Castiel’s coming, you can show him your nurturing side.”

“Oh my god. Are you fucking…Dean, I’m not gonna _chaperone_ your _stealth date._ Just _ask him out_. _Alone._ To a place with _working_ _plumbing._ ”

“It’s not a goddamn date! And the water’s back on, the tankless is just backord–”

“Hello?” Eileen says, from halfway behind the throw pillow. "What's going on?" She’s an only child.

* * *

Sam doesn’t come to the work party. He begs off at the last minute by text message, saying he’s stuck doing something called “e-discovery review,” which sounds too fake not to be real. Dean used to regularly kick his own ass for failing to eke out a degree in something, _anything_ that doesn’t involve peeling sheets of moldy pink fiberglass out of oozing attic walls – but watching Sam’s eyes cross after twelve hours of _heretofore_ s and _thereunto_ s has been a pretty zippy cure for that particular bug. It also means Dean’s experienced enough to mostly rehab Dad’s place by himself and make an actual profit. Because, yeah, it’s a fucking mess, but it’s nowhere near the biggest horror shows Dean has ever tackled.

It helps that Dad was always neat as a pin – forty years out from EAS and the man still folded his bedsheets like they were the fucking stars and bars – but like most dudes in the biz he was usually too busy working to do more than basic maintenance on his own place ( _physician, heal thy_ et cetera). Then he got sick, and stuff just kind of went to hell. Eventually the high water line on Dad’s pride dipped from “do not accept help of any kind” to “avoid nursing home at all costs” and Dean was finally able to get in there and drag shit back up to code enough for home hospice – but it’s still kind of hard to give a shit about cosmetic water damage around the tub when you’re giving your own fucking father a sponge bath.

Anyway. Sam can’t come.

Benny shows up, possibly to make sure Dean is being good to his precious Italian tile, plus a few guys from Dean’s last crew who owe him some hours, along with Ash because he’ll happily do _anything_ as long as there’s free beer (yes, _even that_ ), and Garth because he’ll happily do anything in general. The last two keep it from being an alpha sausagefest, thank christ, which makes things a smidge less awkward when Castiel walks up the front step looking like Hippie Nate Berkus and smelling like a grow op in the Adirondacks. 

“I apologize for being late,” Castiel says, wiping a fine sheen of sweat off his forehead and onto his bicep. “I biked over. I forgot about the weekend bus schedule.” Dean puts off pondering the impact Castiel would have on a busload of unsuspecting passengers in favor of pondering the impact a bike seat would have on Castiel’s ass, then mentally slaps himself for being a gross lech and pulls him into the house.

Blessedly even the meatheads manage to maintain their chill as Dean introduces them to this human therapy llama, although Benny’s eyebrows hold an emergency meeting with his hairline. Nevertheless, he sticks out his big paw, and Castiel takes it with both hands and holds it a bit too long, and Benny’s gaze flicks over to Dean’s and holds _it_ a bit too long. Dean and Benny have never been single and/or drunk at the same time for long enough to figure out the exact limits of Their Deal, but Dean can already tell that this particular moment will both be (a) never discussed and (b) never forgiven.

Dean leads Castiel out of the war-zone and down the little hall to the bedrooms, where Garth should already be Garthing away. “How do you feel about pulling up some carpet? This shit has so many staples in it, it’s like somebody was worried it was gonna float away.”

“Sounds delightful,” Castiel says, maintaining that perfect soap-bubble balance between earnestness and sarcasm that just makes Dean want to lick his face. Yup, pawning him off on Garth for an hour or two is gonna be the only way Dean makes it through the afternoon with his dignity intact. He deposits Cas in Dad’s old office with a box cutter and a shitty screwdriver and Garth’s bottomless supply of howdy, and bugs the fuck out to the living room to collect himself.

He’s not a total cad, though – he checks in on the two of them every half hour or so, tosses in some snacks and confirms that they’re still happily braiding each others’ hair. Around two the pizzas show up and everybody filters out to the backyard, which is in decent overall shape but still shows evidence of Dad’s last shepherd mix. (Jesus, Sam was _mad as fuck_ when, after an entire childhood of Sam fruitlessly pleading for so much as a goldfish, Dad just casually picked up a whole-ass dog like it was a head of lettuce.)

Everybody is still on their best behavior (Dean has learned – the beer comes out _after_ the work), chatting about sports and kids and sharing competitive anecdotes about weird clients. Castiel wins that contest with a fucking bonkers story about an elderly acupuncture customer with a _truly_ distressing kink, and Dean feels an intense wash of pride, like a softball dad whose late bloomer just hit a game-winning double. By the time the conversation burns all the way down to the weather, the living room baseboards are ready for another coat and Ash is back with the gutter attachment for the power washer.

* * *

When Dean wakes up the next morning, the first thing he sees is Castiel’s face.


	5. Reclining Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the joke starts like this: a dropout and a guru are sharing a joint on a dead man’s patio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter includes responsible marijuana use, mentions of past mental illness and substance abuse, birth control and infertility, past Jimmy/Amelia, silly pants.

This seems like a _really_ positive development up until Garth’s lil pixie face appears, too, and asks Dean _how many fingers._ Dean is about to scream and never stop screaming, but before he gets around to that, he notices that he’s lying on the ground, outside, fully dressed, next to the ladder, and also all the other guys are there, including the ones who _truly_ don’t swing that way, and that this is because it’s actually still yesterday instead of tomorrow.

“Shit, I have to stop falling off stuff around you,” Dean says to Cas.

“That’s not a number, amigo,” Garth replies. “Still need to hear just how many fingers you think I’m holding up.”

“Two,” Dean hazards, which is when the pain drops like a club beat right in the center of his skull. He squints it into submission long enough to ask “you okay, Cas?” Because he doesn’t need normal vision when he can _smell_ that the guy is three bus stops past freaked out.

Cas swallows in three-part harmony. “You took a very large fall. You need to remain still until we can get an ambulance here.”

Well if that isn’t a cure for the dizzies, what is. “ _Fuck that,”_ Dean says (yells? His ears are ringing too hard to be sure), pushes himself up on his elbows, “I’m not paying for a fucking ambulance, that shit costs like half a roof.” Cas and Garth immediately try to muscle him back down but Dean scrambles hard and manages to get up to sitting position anyway.

“You ain’t wrong,” Ash drawls. “If y’all wanna drop him in my truck bed, I can drive him to Memorial. They know me there.”

Somewhere, Benny snorts.

Garth clamps Dean’s shoulder in a surprisingly strong grip. “How about we hold off on that. I ride a bus on the weekends, I can evaluate this hombre for free.”

There’s a bunch of static after that and when Dean tunes back in, everybody seems to have sorted out that a bus is an ambulance and Garth spends his free time giving strangers mouth-to-mouth. What follows is some flashlights in the eyes and some more finger quizzes and everything else Dean has come to expect from his increasingly impressive semi-pro career as a head injury victim. While this is all spooling along, Dean pieces together that that he was up on the ladder blasting out the gutters, hit a big-ass paper wasp nest full of big-ass paper wasps and very reasonably jumped the fuck back, albeit into ten feet of thin air. Cas was out tossing carpet into the rent-a-Dumpster, allowing him to witness this enthralling sequel to Dean’s smash-hit treadmill swandive.

Everybody except Garth and Cas goes back in to tidy up for the day and crack into the MillerLites, and eventually Garth is convinced that Dean’s bell has only been moderately rung and that the rest of his bargain basement meat sack is holding steady at its usual C minus. “Now which one of us is gonna drive you home?” he asks. “Or do you want to give Sam a ring?”

Dean frowns and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, no, I can drive myself,” he mutters.

Somehow even Garth’s voice can put its hands on its hips“No way, Jose. You’re Miss Daisy for the rest of today. Tomorrow too if I had my druthers.”

“I’ll just crash here, then. Sam’s busy, he’ll go all nurse-y on me and I’ll just screw up his work.”

Garth is about to deliver a round of homespun objections, but Castiel scoops him. “I can stay with Dean,” he says. “I don’t have any classes til Monday morning.”

“You biked here, didn’t you? Big props from Mother Earth for that, I just want to be sure y’all have a way of getting to the hospital if Dean here doesn’t start improving.”

“There’s Dean’s car.”

“But you can’t drive it,” Dean says, trying hard not to fuzz out again.

Castiel tsks and smiles indulgently. “I promise it won’t get a scratch.”

Dean shakes his head and it feels like there’s a full load of sudsy laundry in there. “No, I mean…you can’t…drive?”

Castiel frowns, confused. “Yes…I can? Unless you mean a manual transmission, which, it’s been awhile, but shouldn’t be a problem either.”

Dean blinks. “But you don’t have a car.”

Cas is looking downright consternated now, or at least that’s what Dean _thinks_ consternated means. “But I do have a license,” he says, with a little hint of offense.

“They didn’t take it away from you?” Dean asks.

“Okay, D-Man,” Garth chirps. “Sounds like you’re in good hands. No naps for you til tonight, lay off the booze and don’t stare at any tiny glowing screens. You call me if you run into any questions or trouble, though. I’ll be on duty, but there aren’t any big games on tonight, so Lord willing, this’ll be a quiet one.”

* * *

There’s no internet at Dad’s house, but God bless, there’s still basic cable. Dean apparently clenched every single muscle group in his body when he Wile E. Coyote’d off the ladder, because by 6pm he’s propped up on a throne made of carefully positioned blue gel packs and frozen peas, a can of Coke sweating in his hand and a king’s ransom in ibuprofen slowly dissolving in his gut, watching, or rather listening to,…something? He’s really not sure what, exactly, because he’s too busy trying to figure out where the hell Castiel has scampered off to without opening his eyes. Finally there’s a wheeze from the front screen door and Dean gets a fresh whiff of Mid-60’s Ski Lodge Porno Set.

Castiel leans into the doorway. “How are you doing? Can I get you anything?” he asks. His hair is falling down into his eyes and his t-shirt has a rim of dried sweat-salt below the collar, which is all just fine and dandy, but he’s tragically switched out of his brain-smashingly well-fitted, primer-speckled jeans into an indigo pair of something that Dean, to his shame, knows are _harem pants –_ baggy everywhere but the ankles, _aka_ the asscheeks of 1845.

“Nice pants,” Dean says, in that way where you sometimes compliment things you hate so much that they threaten to possess your entire being.

“Thank you,” Castiel says, lifting an ankle to re-examine them. “They’re very comfortable.” Then he looks back up and squints at Dean. “You hate them, don’t you.”

Dean is still a little too foggy to mount a convincing denial, so he just goes with his old standby, the Charming Deflection. “Hey, _I_ don’t have to wear ‘em.”

“If you tried them, you might like them.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of.”Dean takes an obnoxious slurp of the Coke.

Castiel smiles, but not nearly enough. Dial it back, Winchester.

“Hey, thanks again for hanging out with me. You really don’t have to stick around all night, if you’ve got stuff to do. I’ve taken way worse knocks than this.”

He crosses his arms. “Hm. That doesn’t actually _subtract_ from my level of concern.” He opens his mouth to add on something else, but the TV suddenly busts out with a truly bizarre toilet paper commercial that for some reason is twice the volume of everything before it, and Dean has to scramble to stab the mute button on the remote, then the _other_ mute button on the _other_ remote, then _fuck it_ just crank the volume all the way down with fifteen tiny _individual_ finger-stabs, _Jesus wept._

They both heave tiny sighs of relief into the ensuing calm, followed by a silence that takes at least ten seconds to become awkward.

“What did you mean about my driver’s license?” Cas says.

Dean cringes. “Ugh, yeah, I’m sorry, man. I was super out of it, I just got confused about the not having a car thing–”

“I actually meant about having my license taken away by somebody. Did somebody at the gym tell you that?” He hugs his arms a little closer to his body.

“Huh? No, I just…you said you, uh. _Had_ to live with your family, and, um.” Fuck, what’s a diplomatic way to say _gossiped about the details of your private life with my enormous lawyer brother and his tiny lawyer girlfriend_. “I guess I just assumed they…wouldn’t let you drive, either? And your uncle kind of called me a, uh, dealer or something, and with the legal name stuff, I know a lot of people don’t like to carry ID with an old name on it, and that plus the biking and the busing, I–”

“– I get it,” Castiel cuts in – kinda snappish on a Castiel scale, but he sighs right after. “I see how you could assume that.”

His shoulders drop and his face goes grim and slack and it just _sucks,_ so Dean grabs at the nearest loose conversational thread and yanks hard: “Is somebody shit-talking you at the fucking _O-Zone?_ Do I need to fight some yoga moms for your honor?”

“Dean, is there something about being a parent and practicing yoga that you find contemptible?”

Dean shoves himself up off the couch, which sends a nasty twinge up his neck and some real pretty sparks into the borders of his eyeballs. “Jesus, _no, Cas,_ of course not _._ I’m just kidding around–”

“Well, I’m not,” Castiel snaps. He pins Dean with a big blue death glare to end all death glares, pink blotches flooding in at the top of his cheeks, his lips hanging open just a crack.

If this were a chick flick, this would be Dean’s cue to grab him by the shoulders and kiss the shit out of him and then they’d stumble back against the wall and succumb to frenzied tongue wrestling and gasping each others’ names.

Instead, Dean does the actual human being thing and just stands there.

“I’m not,” Cas repeats.

“I know,” Dean says. “I’m really sorry.”

Another painful pause, then Cas looks away, swallows hard, closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Dean just stands there and kind of wobbles in the wind. He’s down to hug the guy, take a slap across the face, do the wall-kissing thing – whatever needs to happen next.He just waits.

“Fuck,” Castiel says. “I need to smoke.”

* * *

So the joke starts like this: a dropout and a guru are sharing a joint on a dead man’s patio.

Or the guru is smoking it, and the dropout’s just kind of…supervising, because weed plus a concussion just _seems_ like a bad idea, and also it’s been awhile and Dean gets the impression that this is not entry-level bud. It is the kind that comes with an innocuous name like Cookies ’n Cream but after two li’l hits you’re so devastatingly chilled out that you’re starring in your own remake of _Weekend at Bernie’s._

Maybe Dean’s wrong, though, because it just seems to pull Castiel down to a lightly glazed version of his yogasona. He doesn’t even have the munchies, so Dean’s working the back nine on this bag of Doritos all by himself.

Anyway. Dean doesn’t actually know the joke yet, he just figures there’s one in there, somewhere.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says, about halfway through the joint. “I was supposed to stay sober in case you needed to go to the hospital.” He holds it like a cigarette, between his index and middle finger, more femme fatale than college kid, which is really doing something for Dean.

“Nah, I’m fine,” Dean answers. “I mean unless I swallow a chip wrong, or something.” He sucks the Cool Ranch powder off his fingers like the suave motherfucker he is. “Seems like you kinda needed it.” They’re sitting on plastic lawn chairs, the only furniture out here that hadn’t rotted or rusted.

Cas frowns at the joint. “It’s medical,” Cas says. “I don’t use benzodiazepines anymore. Zachariah isn’t thrilled about it, as you’ve seen, but it means my aunt doesn’t have anybody left in the house to steal them from, either, so we’ve called it a draw.”

“Zachariah, that’s Princess Peach from the driveway?”

“Mm.” Castiel takes another long, slow hit; Dean would be somewhere out past Jupiter by now if he were the one on the toke. Castiel holds his breath, no hint of a cough, then slowly lets the blue smoke drain out from his nose. Like some kind of…shaggy dragon.

Dean’s maybe getting a bit of a contact buzz.

Castiel purses his lips and looks up at the last bits of sunset visible over the back fence, vivisectioned by power lines and bare branches. “I should’ve guessed this would be a bit much. I’m normally better at accepting my limitations.”

“What, the house full of big stinky dudes? It’s my bad, man, I should’ve kept it smaller. They kinda forget how to dial it down around civilians.”

Cas shakes his head and honors Dean with a twitch of a smile on the left side. “No, they were fine. Stinky, yes, but fine. It was actually the house.”

Dean is obviously 1000% on board with this house being a giant fucking bummer, but somehow coming from outside the family gets his hackles up a little. “It’s not _that_ bad,” he says. “I mean, I don’t think.”

“Nothing’s wrong with the house itself, either. It’s the renovation work. Which is also fine, you’re obviously a very skilled contractor.”

Dean snorts. “I fell off my own ladder.”

“It’s rude not to accept a compliment, you know.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean coughs.

“An injury on a work site was how _this_ happened.” Castiel gestures at himself with his free hand, sweeping over his whole body like he’s both Vanna White _and_ the jet ski.

“What, that outfit?”

“Oh, my god.” Cas rolls his eyes and fakes like he’s about to get up until Dean grabs his wrist and pulls him back down.

“Dude, c’mon, I’m fucking with you!”

Castiel sighs in exaggerated disgust. “Why am I always attracted to avoidant men,” he says, then takes another hit. It’s a short hit but it’s long enough that Dean _almost_ has time to squeegee his own exploded brains off the sliding door and scoop them back into his skull, just a few tablespoons short of what he had before.

Castiel frowns at the joint. “Hm. You weren’t supposed to know that. This strain’s a little disinhibiting.”

“It’s cool,” Dean coughs, and his hand is _still in the fucking Dorito bag_. He frantically whappity-whaps his hand free of it and there are some chip casualties, but his dignity is worth risking a visit from the local raccoon mafia.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”

“What happened?” Dean does not give a _shit_ what happened, he just wants to plow through the expository dialogue section as quickly as possible so they can circle back to the part where Dean maybe has a chance of jumping this space alien’s bones, or flippers, or whatever he’s got under those _stupid fucking pants_.

“I fell off the roof of a church. Putting down new shingles.” He presses his lips together hard enough that they go white at the edges. “Well, _I_ fell. Jimmy _jumped_.”

“Uh. But…aren’t you…Jimmy? Is this a secret identical twin thing or like a multiple personalities scenario?” Shit, the possibility that this guy is actually bugfuck hadn’t really occurred to Dean. He’s not down for bugfuck, only garden variety fuck, and he has learned through unfortunate experience to never, ever, _ever_ cross those streams.

Castiel sighs. “He was me. This is always difficult to explain to sober people.”

“We could fix that,” Dean says, maybe a little more eagerly than he should.

“No, no, I want to try.” Castiel takes a deep _centering_ breath and sets his shoulders back, like they’re done with Gym Announcements and about to start class, and Dean involuntarily un-hunches and takes a breath, too. (He has a brief flash of Dad teaching him drill positions in first grade; to this day if Sam shouts “parade, rest” Dean reflexively goes wide-stance and crosses his hands behind his back. Christ, he’s suggestible.)

“So, for a number of reasons – which I’m sure you can guess – Jimmy was legally emancipated at 16. Like many children of wealthy, self-involved people, he rebelled by joining a very dogmatic religious community. Nothing exotic,” he quickly adds.

“So not a Kool-Aid-drinking alien apocalypse cult, gotcha.”

“More of an iced tea-drinking Second Coming apocalypse cult. The pastor had a daughter–”

Dean nods. “Those guys _always_ have a daughter. That’s how they get you.”

“And they became close, ” Castiel goes on, half-lidding at the goof. “She was an omega, as God intended all women to be–”

“Oh right, of course. Sure.”

“Which presented – sorry for the pun,” Castiel says, “–a problem for Jimmy, since he was as well. Omega men were tolerated in the church, but only if they remained celibate and preferably closeted.” He pauses a moment, to see if Dean has a comment, but Dean’s head is starting to ring again and he’s holding onto the deep, warm sound of Castiel’s voice.

“However, since his family had pressed him to get a hormonal implant, and he regularly wore blockers, nobody had any way of knowing. So he behaved as if he were an Alpha, and he was treated like one. The young woman he was interested in knew his designation, but she didn’t have any intention of revealing that. That was her own little act of rebellion.” He sighs. “They were pressured to marry as soon as she turned eighteen, and since they were –”

“Horny little motherfuckers?” Dean suggests.

“–eager for intimacy, they agreed. They had a child a few years later; it understandably took longer than if Jimmy had actually been an Alpha, but Amelia largely shouldered the blame.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He was implicated as well, yes. At any rate, they had their daughter.” He carefully pinches out the joint. “Claire.”

Somewhere in the back of Dean’s currently too-small skull, a second shoe drops, and it lands with a hollow thud. “Oh yeah. Your interior decorator.”

“Yes, she’s very talented,” Castiel replies, quickly and with the tonelessness of a canned response. “After a year, they were ready to pursue a second child, but the prospect of another long wait was too daunting, so Jimmy sought out additional hormone therapy.”

Dean knows he’s a lucky dude, when it comes to suppressants – just a poke in the arm twice a year and presto, he hasn’t had a real heat since he was 14, with no side effects beyond a little yarfiness for a day or two after. Other guys have to take a truckload of shit just so they can avoid heats and still get it up. But then, Dean’s never intentionally tried to get anybody preggers; he could be firing blanks, for all he knows. Nobody in Big Pharma really gives a shit about this stuff, so everybody’s their own fuckin’ guinea pig.

“A few months later, he started hearing voices.” Cas crosses his arms against his chest; it’s really starting to cool off out here. Dean should really go get the guy a sweatshirt or something, but he’s worried that if he moves, Cas might startle and go bounding off into the twilight, like a cartoon deer.

“Just one voice, actually. It said it was an angel. A biblical angel, _not_ the television kind,” he growls, pointing a pre-emptive _shush_ finger at Dean without even bothering to turn his head.

“Hey,” Dean says, mugging like he’s a little hurt to cover for actually being a little hurt. “I wasn’t gonna joke.”

Cas finally rolls his head to the side and gives Dean a booster shot of The Disapproving Eyebrow.

“You know that doesn’t actually discourage me,” Dean says.

Cas smirks and shakes his head. _Fuck,_ Dean hopes this guy isn’t totally Looney Tunes.

“The angel’s name was Castiel,” Cas says.

Fuck. This guy is totally Looney Tunes.


	6. Wild Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welp, there’s the mental image of Castiel as a nice naked Christian dad, gritting his teeth and turning a hot, raw red under the stream. Dean’s dick checks in, just making sure everybody’s food is tasting okay, can it get anyone a refill, etc.?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy here's the Heavy Chapter! It's all uphill from here, I swear. Mental illness, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, reproductive health, major injury, mentions of cancer, and people who don't eat the crust on their pizza. 
> 
> Unbeta'd/unproofed after a long night of baby-wrangling, so please forgive any unfinished sentences or typos.

Dean is staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. The light in here is way too bright — last year he installed an eyeball-melting fluorescent fixture, which helped a lot with late night emergency clean-ups and pill-hunting expeditions, but also makes everybody look like they have a wasting disease.

Now that the tile is down he could finally look for something a little more selfie-friendly, but it’s not like he’s had much motivation. He knows that no amount of mood lighting is gonna change the fact that he’s kicking the tires on forty but sleeping on his baby brother’s couch, that he’s still carrying some stress weight from those last few months with Dad, that he’s blown way too many nights of his life staring down the nearest available abyss. You name a mistake, Dean has probably made it, and then circled back for seconds. He’s a giant goddamn mess from soup to nuts.

_But at least he doesn’t think he’s a fucking angel._

* * *

He washes his hands – his sole claim to virtue as a human male is his willful commitment to washing his fucking hands after pissing _even when nobody is looking_. He grabs a jacket for the nutcase shivering out on the patio and then stops by the kitchen to stall for time, and when he’s done puttering discovers that he’s _whoops!_ halfway through a beer. He mentally cusses himself out for being a fucking alcoholic and pours the rest out to prove he isn’t.

“Can I help with anything?” Castiel asks from zero-point-five inches behind him.

“Jesus _Christ_!” Dean shouts, cracking the bottle in the sink as he whirls around.

“No, I never had _that_ delusion,” Castiel says, leaning back against the counter and fingering the scruff under his chin with exaggerated nonchalance. Dean would engage with this but it suddenly feels like the stone ball from _Raiders_ is rolling around inside his skull, and his vision is fuzzing at the edges again. “Fuck, he says, weakly. “Hold on.” He slides his ass all the way down the sink cabinet and onto the floor so he doesn’t go 3-for-3 in the head trauma semifinals.

“Oh, Dean, I’m so sorry.” Those always-warm fingertips make contact on Dean’s shoulder and then almost immediately lift away again. “May I touch you?” Cas asks, like Dean’s assing-out on Triangle pose.

“‘’m fine. You just. Snuck up on me there. Just need a minute.”

There’s a long stretch of quiet – Dean gets the feeling that it may, in fact, be one actual science-minute – in which the only sound is a distant yowling that’s either some neighbor’s toddler having a meltdown, or a couple of cats banging it out.

The tap turns on in the sink behind Dean’s head, then shuts off, and then there’s the soft thunk of a glass of water being set down on the linoleum next to him.

Dean rubs his face, takes a slug of the water. “Thanks,” he says, keeping his eyes locked at the level of those scandalously naked ankles. “

“Are you worried I might be unstable?”

Dean’s eyes pop right up. The kitchen’s pretty dark now, just the undermount light above the range keeping it from terminal murk – but he can still make out that Castiel’s face is parked in Neutral, like he wants Dean to have a safe, judgement-free space to call him a fucking loon.

“Honestly, dude, I’ve heard weirder shit,” Dean says. He _has_ heard weirder shit, because Frank Deveraux can rewire a house in half the time of an electrician who _doesn’t_ believe wi-fi is a CIA mind control scheme. But Dean has never wanted to get in Frank’s pants ( _god! no!!_ ), and he’s also never been alone with him, in an empty house, after dark, with a brain injury, surrounded by power tools.

Castiel slides his hands into the pockets that his Buddhist clown pants apparently have, like he’s one of his kid’s bashful anime girls _._ “I would understand it if you did.“

“Okay. Are you?” Dean asks. “‘Cause if I need to lunge for a nailgun, I’d rather get it over with.”

“I can’t speak for anybody else’s standards. But I’m more stable _now_ than I have been in my entire adult life.” Castiel smiles, but it’s, like…the O’Douls of smiles. “And, just to be clear. I don’t think I’m an angel.”

“Cool,” Dean says.He sets the glass of water against his temple and lets his eyes close.

“Not anymore.”

“God _dammit_ , dude,” Dean says, and shoots an exasperated expression at Cas. Now there’s an actual 80-proof smirk, tucked in there at the midline between scruff and shag.

* * *

Dean settles back into the couch, realizes that he’s in the exact position he was on that holy night when Dad was off on some big job in KC and Sammy was at the Special Mathlympics or something, so he and Rhonda got blitzed on Kahlua and whippets, traded underwear, and she sat on his face so he could eat her out through his own boxers.

He sits up.

Castiel follows him in and sets the last box of pizza on the drywall-dusted coffee table. “You should eat,” he says. “Keeping your blood sugar up will probably help with your head.”

“Won’t hear me complaining.” Dean excavates a slice of olives and mushrooms, congealed just like the evening’s mood. Castiel sits down (on the floor, the weirdo) and goes on a private eyeball tour of the living room. Dean hasn’t gotten around to serious reno work in here yet, just got the hospital bed out, so the walls are still a museum retrospective of Winchester Family Hair Mistakes, 1975-2001. He sees Castiel’s eyes hit the last photo with Mom in it and zero in like some kind of grief-seeking missile.

“So, uh. What do imaginary angels talk about?” Dean asks, around a slightly hazardous amount of pizza, because he’d like to keep at least _one_ Bummer Topic from flying out of the jar.

Castiel shrugs. “Oh, all sorts of things. Auditory hallucinations can be surprisingly good company.”

“Okay, but was he like, _the Royals really need to tighten up their infield if they’re gonna make it to the post-season_ , or was it more like _surprise, you’re Jesus?_ ”

“Castiel never tried to convince Jimmy that he was Jesus. He–” Cas stops, frowns. “Actually, I’m not sure whether Castiel was male. The voice sounded like a version of Jimmy’s, but that could have just been a way to gain Jimmy’s trust.” He looks back at Dean. “I do realize how this sounds.”

“Does seem like a pretty deep game for a Snuffleupagus.”

“A what?”

“Mr. Snuffleupagus? Sesame Street?” Holy shit, this guy really is a Martian.

Castiel arches his brows. “Not really a public television kind of family.”

“Yeah, okay, that checks out. Mr. Snuffleupagus. He’s a big woolly mammoth kind of thing with drag queen eyelashes. And, uh Big Bird – he’s the one who’s a really big bird, FYI-”

Castiel dryly flips him off and tugs the pizza box across the table. Dean would be aroused, but he can’t talk and chew and horn out all at the same time without choking to death.

“Anyway, Big Bird is the only one who ever sees him. Because he’s, like, an imaginary best friend. But the producers wound up making Mr. Snuffleupagus real because–” Dean swallows. “It’s actually a huge fucking bummer. Go back to the angel shit,” he says, flapping his hand at Cas.

“More of a bummer than the angel shit?”

“Trust me on this.”

Cas looks a little skeptical, but he takes the opening. “Alright. Castiel was imaginary, so he – they – “ Dean paddles his hand in an _I get it_ gesture – “…didn’t have independent thought, per se. But you can have all kinds of cognitive activity without being conscious of it. Dreams, for example. Castiel turned up in those, too.”

“What’d _that_ look like?”

“Castiel always looked exactly like Jimmy. Sometimes at a younger age, but that was the only difference. Castiel said that any other form would threaten Jimmy’s sanity.”

“…uh _huh_.” Dean squints.

“The irony’s not lost on me.” Castiel catches a bit of olive in his palm before it can _farewell cruel world_ off his slice and onto the carpet. “Initially, Castiel just gave Jimmy some testimony of the coming Apocalypse to share with the church.”

“Oh, sure. Normal friend stuff.”

“In _that_ community? Yes, it was. Repeating Castiel’s testimony earned Jimmy a great deal of approbation.” Castiel takes a final bite and sets the crust of his slice back in the box, because apparently nobody can be a perfect ten. “That means approval. FYI.”

“Hey now. Play nice, or I won’t let you drive me to the hospital when my brain starts leaking out of my nose.” Dean shoves himself up a bit. “So, okay, the Touched By An Angel stuff won you some brownie points? Won _Jimmy_ some brownie points?”

“Yes. His father-in-law was thrilled. Voices, visions, speaking in tongues – those were all important spiritual experiences. Blessings that congregants were called on to share with each other.”

Damn if the guy doesn’t look a little nostalgic for Saturday nights down on the Jesus H. Christ Snake-Handling Ranch. It makes Dean wonder about that churchy vibe in Castiel’s class – if the yoga thing is where all that shit ended up for him. _Om shanti_ isn’t exactly _Praise the Lord!!_ but it’s not… _not_ , either.

Cas frowns at the last wedge of pizza like he’s waiting for it to grow legs. “Then Castiel started to talk to Jimmy at all hours. It was exciting when it happened at church, or during prayer. But in the middle of putting dinner on the table, or at two in the morning, or driving to a client meeting–”

“Yikes. What was work?”

“He sold ad space for Christian radio. 88.5.”

Dean snorts. “Man, I’m trying to picture that for you, and it’s, uh. Really something.”

“Well, he wasn’t particularly good at it, but when your advertisers mostly belong to the faith community as well, being the preacher’s son-in-law is a very effective sales pitch.”

“Okay, dude, I need to know. Was this a suit and tie kind of deal?”

“Oh, yes.”

Dean sits up. “Sorry, sorry I need another moment to process this. What are we talking here, two-button? Double-breasted? Tweed sports coat? Like was Jimmy a striped-tie man, or was he more into solids?”

“Dean.”

Dean cackles a little, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, just. Trying to visualize this,” he waves at the goony bird in the _Seventh Voyage of Sinbad_ ensemble, “– wearing a _belt_. Keep going.”

“First the frequency of Castiel’s ‘visits’ increased. Then the…volume. Instead of just hearing a voice in his head, in a sort of conversational tone, it was like…have you ever been next to a bank of speakers, at a loud concert?”

“Yeah, man,” Dean says. “Pretty sure I lost some fillings at this one Metallica show. Have _you?_ ”

“Radio stations sponsor a lot of live music,” Castiel says. “It was _that_ loud. He was losing a dangerous amount of sleep – his wife was worried he was going to get in a car accident. So he started taking a prescription sleep aid. Just to get enough rest to function.”

Dean flips the pizza box closed so Cas will stop trying to reheat that last slice with just his eyeballs. Castiel blinks, rolls his shoulders back. “That worked, for awhile. Then Castiel started to talk about new subjects. Not just details of the coming Apocalypse, but demanding tests of Jimmy’s faith.” He presses the heel of his right hand against his eye, like he’s trying to pop it back into the socket. “Small things, mostly, like handing money to a stranger on the street, or standing in the shower with the hot water tap turned all the way up.”

Welp, there’s the mental image of Castiel as a nice naked Christian dad, gritting his teeth and turning a hot, raw red under the stream. Dean’s dick checks in, just making sure everybody’s food is tasting okay, can it get anyone a refill, etc.

“The demands wouldn’t stop until Jimmy fulfilled them, no matter what else he was doing. The sleeping pills helped at night, but they didn’t do anything for the day.”

Dean kinda feels the next thing rushing towards them, like how all the birds and squirrels know to book it ahead of a forest fire.

“Jimmy was on a business trip, to a client in Virginia – he had a client presentation early the next morning, basically before dawn in Central time, so he couldn’t take his usual sleep aid. Castiel wanted him to…” He trails off. “It would have been very disruptive. He was afraid he might be spotted by somebody associated with his clients if he ordered a drink at the hotel bar, so he-”

“Strip club, or liquor store?” Dean asks.

Castiel stares at him, like maybe Dean is the crazy one here.

“Those are the two places where you’re guaranteed not gonna run into any of your fellow Bible-thumpers, right?” Dean says.

“Liquor store,” Castiel replies, real quiet. They sit with that for awhile.

* * *

The moon is still skulking around below the roofline, but the stars are out. Dad’s street isn’t officially paved, just a gravel drive, so there’s no streetlight either; it’s hell when you drop your keys, but makes for a cool screensaver on clear nights. They’re out front, leaning against the grill of Dad’s SUV. The hood of the Impala has a friendlier grade, but two guys in the range of a buck seventy-five each is a bit much to demand of an older woman.

Castiel is finishing the joint, wearing Dad’s old shearling jacket. It still smells kinda like those hot pennies, with hints of Marlboro and paint thinner – a combination that should on no planet feel comforting, but “a combination that should on no planet feel comforting” is probably the motto on the Winchester family crest.

Cas sighs. “Anyway, that was the next few years.”

“Was it just booze and sleeping pills? Because I’m not exactly clutchin’ my pearls over here. That’s just Wednesday night for most of America.”

Castiel is a grey silhouette next to him. “No, there were other things. Castiel always broke through eventually, so Jimmy had to come up with novel combinations every few months.”

“Shit. That sucks.”

There’s some movement Dean thinks is a shrug. “It probably wouldn’t have progressed too much if Castiel stuck to physical tests of faith. But he started telling Jimmy that he should out himself.”

“As a user? Or as an omega.”

“The latter,” he replies, as if anybody in the history of the universe has ever actually used the word _latter_ in conversation. Kinda strains the credulity more than the angel stuff, if Dean’s being real honest. “Castiel kept insisting that it would be a test of faith for their church, and that the Lord would provide for Jimmy’s family.”

“Still just the one kid?”

A plume of smoke glows briefly in the air. “Still just the one kid.”

“So how much did, uh–”

“Amelia? Not much. She could tell that Jimmy was struggling, but she didn’t know what Castiel was asking for. They went to counseling, to try to ease the burden on their marriage, but it was with one of her father’s close friends in the congregation, so there wasn’t much hope of real help.” He coughs, for the first time; here he almost pitched a perfect game. “Jimmy was afraid that if he obeyed Castiel, she’d leave him and take Claire, of course. But, with the benefit of an outside perspective, I think he was more afraid that she might agree to it.”

Dean is kinda entertained by the concept of an _outside perspective_ here, from a guy whose brain is apparently a three-ring circus, but that’s the kind of quibbly semantic shit that sent Sam to Stanford Law and Dean to the loading dock at Lowe’s.

“At any rate. Things were deteriorating.”

“And then you were on a roof.“

“And then Jimmy was on a roof.” Castiel jams his hands into the coat’s pockets; there’s a crinkling noise. “There’s something in here.”

“Probably a pack of smokes.” Dean can practically taste the question mark in the air. “Not that kind of cancer.“

“Ah.”

“So the roof?”

“The congregation was doing a lot of building-related mission work in rural communities. Family homes, church repairs. All the men who could hold a paintbrush were expected to participate. They were fixing the roof of a house church out in a little town, Lebanon. It's a few hours down 36.”

“And they let their precious angel prophet up on the roof?”

“That was the job for the day. Jimmy was a deacon, and the pastor’s son-in-law. You’re supposed to lead by example.”

“Did he jump to, you know…? Or did the Castiel voice–”

“Jimmy never wanted to die,” Cas says, sharpish and louder than he’s said anything in the last hour. “And Castiel _never_ encouraged Jimmy to hurt himself. He always promised Jimmy that, so long as he followed Castiel’s instructions, he’d be protected.”

“10-4.”

“But Castiel knew about…the drinking, and the drug use. He knew Jimmy was doing it to shut him out. He knew that Jimmy had been.” Castiel takes a shallow breath and huffs it out again immediately, like he’s throwing back a fish. “Participating in some other troubling activities, as well.”

Dean’s lizard brain still runs the numbers on what _troubling activities_ might include _,_ but his dick takes a pass. Nice to know it has _some_ limits.

“And Castiel knew that Jimmy was worn down enough that his faith was starting to waver. He had begun to think it was possible that Castiel _might_ just be a delusion.”

“Ruh-roh.”

“Mm. So Castiel told Jimmy that he was on the path to damnation. That unless he gave himself over to Castiel – to the Lord – immediately, entirely – he would die in sin, and his family would suffer the consequences. That Amelia would follow him into addiction. That Claire would be orphaned, that she would live a life of abandonment and violence. She would never know the love of God.”

“Holy fuck. Did he threaten to crowbar his kneecaps, too?”

Cas adjusts his position, and the truck’s frame bounces a little, bumps up into Dean’s ass.“Castiel didn’t…frame _any_ of this as a _threat._ It was just presented to Jimmy as a fact. Prophecy.”

Dean whistles. “A literal come-to-Jesus, huh.”

“So Jimmy said yes.”

“Yes to…?”

“He agreed to let Castiel take control of his body, and his life.” The moon’s finally breaking out from the rooftops and trees; Cas’s face is a gunmetal gray mask instead of an indistinct putty blob. “And then he jumped.”

Dean slaps the hood – Mom's wedding ring clacks on the metal. There'll probably be a scratch. “What… as, like, a _fuck you_?”

“No. As an insurance policy.”

Dean blinks. “Gonna have to explain that play to me, Chief.”

“If Castiel _was_ a delusion – and Jimmy was just descending into sin out of weakness – then he’d fall, and his death would look accidental. There wouldn’t be an inquest into cause of death at the coroner; as next-of-kin, only Amelia would get the paperwork. He wouldn’t be outed as an omega to her family. And there’d be an insurance payout for Amelia and Claire to live off of, if he did.” There’s some more crinkling as Castiel fiddles with the wrapper on Dad’s last, abandoned pack. “And, if Castiel really was an angel – well, he would save Jimmy from the fall. The physical one, or the spiritual one, it didn’t really matter.”

“Holy fuck.”

“Jimmy wasn’t a very daring person, but he had his moments." Dean can make out something that might be a smile. "Anyway, I woke up in the hospital a few weeks later. They’d taken out the implant as a matter of procedure, and the additional hormones weren’t in Jimmy’s medical file. His surgeons had his body in a medically-induced coma until it was stable enough for a spinal fusion surgery, so it had already passed through the worst stages of detox.”

He sighs and eases up on the crinkling. “And the family knew everything.”


	7. Corpse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He sets the plastic down in the precise middle of the floor and studiously pats the dust off his Barbara Eden pants. _Dad would love him,_ Dean thinks, beating out _Dad would hate him_ by about two tenths of a second. Well, what else is new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here's the last chapter! For this part of the story. There will be more from this 'verse coming down the pike, but the exchange wraps up today, so it'll be coming as another work in a series. 
> 
> This chapter includes some more substance abuse recovery, mental health issues, and injury/surgical recovery stuff, but everybody's pretty sweet about it.

Dean carefully peels back the painters tape from the door frame of Dad’s old bedroom. He can get away with a few minutes of focusing this hard before his brain will start fuzzing out again, and if he waits any longer it’ll be too tacky to come off clean. “So who did you think you were, when you woke up? Were you like a blank slate?“

Castiel is carefully folding up the plastic drop-cloth, like it’s not just a giant wad of trash.

“I knew who Jimmy was, and that his body and mine were the same, and I had all his memories. I also knew that, fundamentally, I was a different person. But I was able to recognize that Castiel probably wasn’t real.”

“ _Probably?_ Dude. _”_

“It’s hard to prove a negative, Dean.”

Dean gives him an _is it, though?_ look, but Cas parries it with a single eyebrow and keeps folding.

“Castiel’s voice was gone, and I was in a very broken, very mortal body, so the most reasonable conclusion was that it had all been a psychotic delusion. The medical professionals were inclined to agree, obviously. Mostly they were concerned that I was dissociating, and how that might impactphysical recovery.” He sets the plastic down in the precise middle of the floor and studiously pats the dust off his Barbara Eden pants. _Dad would love him_ , Dean thinks, beating out _Dad would hate him_ by about two tenths of a second. Well, what else is new.

The last of the tape comes off smooth, so Dean scrunches it into a satisfying little wad and watches Castiel straighten up. “Hold on. You said you got a spinal fusion. That’s where they bolt your fucking spine together, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“How the fuck do you do _yoga_?”

Castiel gives Dean a half-lidded happy gecko smile. “Yoga was part of the physical therapy program I went through, and I wound up liking it. There are still a few poses I have to modify, but I’m at close to full mobility. I’m lucky that it’s just a couple vertebrae, though.”

“Well, I got a _couple_ bitsy li’l pins in my left knee, and anytime the weather’s weird, I scootch down staircases on my butt.” Dean tosses the tape ball, aiming for the center of the plastic dropcloth; it bounces off of Castiel’s ankle, instead.

“Keep coming to class, maybe that’ll change.” Cas smacks him with the lopsided grin, but it fades after a few seconds. “Yoga was the only highlight of a very unpleasant couple of years.I didn’t have any visitors in the hospital. I remember Amelia called a few times – she may have done it in secret. Just about everything had come out; I was banned from the church, the radio station. Everything. But the hardest part, honestly, was that I couldn’t explain to her, why I wasn’t her husband anymore. I tried, very hard, to be him, so that Amelia could have some closure, and Claire could…” He trails off. “But he was gone.” Castiel lapses into silence, looking down at the little blue ball of tape. Then he sighs out of his nose. “Amelia filed to divorce Jimmy as soon as I was stable. She was granted full custody of Claire – I asked for visitations, but I wasn’t really in a position to argue for it. She would occasionally send one of Claire’s drawings to me at the inpatient facility – still does, as you’ve seen. Otherwise everything went through the family attorney.

“Jimmy’s job was gone, obviously, so I lost his insurance after a few months; I don’t know if it was the facility that tracked down Jimmy’s family, or if Amelia did. Jimmy’s parents had both died in the intervening years, but the rest of the family swooped in before I could be discharged. They offered to pay off the debt and take care of my ongoing care and housing, as long as I cooperated with their preferred legal arrangement.”

“So is it the Britney thing?”

Cas blinks and then squints, scanning Dean’s face for a gag. “The…?”

Dean snappy-snaps his fingers a couple of times, trying to dredge the word up through the pulp of his remaining brain matter. “Conservatorship!” he says, a little too loudly. 

“Yes, that’s what it’s called.”

A nasty thought knocks Dean a few degrees to the left. “Hey, is it gonna be a problem, you spending the night over here?”

“It’s not house arrest, Dean. It’s just a kind of legal guardianship.”

“Okay, but you…you’re an adult. Like a functioning adult. You don’t need a…legal guardian, or a nanny, or whatever. You’ve been through some strange shit, but you have your act together better than _I_ do.”

Castiel gives a dry laugh, hands on his hips. “If you say so.”

Dean tugs out a fresh length of tape from the roll. “Anybody ever tell you it’s rude not to accept a compliment?” 

“Hmm. Touché.” Cas gives Dean a semi-tolerant glare, then runs a hand through his Muppet crop. “The point isn’t that _I_ need it _now_ , it’s that _they_ wanted it _then._ I think the possibility of being related to somebody on the street was more concerning to them than my actual welfare. They wanted to be sure they had as much control as possible over the situation. I wasn’t really in a position to argue. I was focused on relearning to tie my own shoes, and piecing together a consistent identity, in that order.” Cas glances down at his canvas slip-ons. “I had mixed success.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” Dean lies. There’s a bit of tape still down along the baseboard – it’s gonna drive Dean nuts if he leaves it there, and if it didn’t, Dad’s ghost would probably climb a ladder up from Hell just to bawl him out. So he bends down to pick it off.

Cas, dry as a fucking bone, adds: “Learning to manage unmedicated heats for the first time wasn’t easy, either.”

Dean leers over his shoulder and waggles his brows. “Lot of hot hookups in that nursing home?”

Castiel misses the pitch, like, _entirely_ , even though he fucking started it. Instead he drops down into Concerned Eighth-grade Teacher Face, like Dean’s clowning about some mandatory reporter shit in homeroom. “It’s a close environment, and there’s a higher proportion of patients who can’t take blockers or suppressants because of medication conflicts. The staff try to –”

Dean frantically flippers at him, twists around to plop down on the floor. The guy’s like a switch ( _knock it off_ ) whose only settings are _Sahara Desert_ and _Actual Brick_. “I’m messing with you, man. Bad joke, ignore me.”

“I’d really rather not. I’m here to look after you, but I’ve been talking about myself for the last two hours.”

Dean shakes his head, leans back onto his left arm so he can pinch out the ache building between just behind the bridge of his nose. “No, seriously, I’m good. I spend a lot of time alone in this dump listening to my own brain. It’s nice to get out of my own head for a bit, you know?” He pauses just long enough to catch up with his own mouth. “I mean. Obviously you do. Jesus Christ, I swear I _have_ been listening.” Fuck, he’s tired, the neck-up kind where you sorta wish you could pop out your eyeballs with a spoon, drop ‘em in a glass of cold soda water to rehydrate overnight.

“So tell me, Dean,” Castiel says, in a flawless 12-step sing-song, and licks his thumb to flip open an imaginary therapist notepad. “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to _you?_ ”

“Died a virgin.”

Castiel drops his hands to his thighs and laughs. It’s such a nice fucking sound, right out of his chest, and it makes Dean feel like he just klanged the bell in one of those old-timey carnival strength tests. Cas steps over the dropcloth and abruptly drops to his haunches right in front of Dean, who has to suppress the urge to hiss _careful, careful!_ like he hasn’t seen Castiel casually lever himself up into a handstand a few dozen times.

“You,” Cas says, “are actually pretty funny, underneath all that macho crap.” Dean takes one of those deepy, involuntary, Castiel-induced breaths, inhales old sweat and fresh weed and _this rustic cedar cabin is our only shelter from the blizzard, but there’s just one bed!_ Castiel tilts his head back, like he’s smelling whatever the fuck Dean smells like, like it’s something better than _overcompensating loner_ or _extremely belated GED._ Dean can see all the way down the long line of Castiel’s throat, into the shadows of his collarbones.

“Yeah well,” Dean says. “So, hey, why do you use the name of the imaginary angel that ruined your, uh, body’s past life?”

“Castiel didn’t ruin Jimmy’s life. Jimmy never _had_ a life. He just occupied the spare spaces in other people’s.”

“Their, uh, spiritual poolhouses?”

Castiel lowers his lids to half-mast, presumably in mourning for Dean’s chances of getting laid tonight. “I suppose I walkedinto that one,” he says. “But, for as imperfect as my life currently is…it _is_ mine. I am,” he says, “a _real boy._ When I look in the mirror, I’ll always see Jimmy – it’s an unavoidable reminder of how much it cost, for me to exist. Castiel was invisible, but when I hear other people say his name, it does the same thing.” He shifts forwards on his toes, deeper into the crouch. “Does that make sense?”

“If I say yes, can we make out?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s the sanest thing I’ve ever heard,” Dean deadpans.

“Can I kiss you?” Castiel asks.

Dean’s form is a little off, his mouth is dry so his tongue kind of catches on the back of his teeth, and the angles between them are weird and Not Great, his hamstrings are maxed out leaning forward this far and he really hasn’t kissed this incompetently since middle school, but then Castiel sets those warm fingertips on the side of Dean’s face, and suddenly Dean’s just doing something hard, instead of something fucking excruciating.

…yeah, okay. Real funny. Grow up.

* * *

If this were a chick flick, this would be their cue to tumble to the floor in a tangle of limbs and frantically tear each others’ clothes off but then inexplicably downshift into tender, exploratory fucking, the kind that’s shot through Vaseline or gauze or whatever computer filter does that glowy thing now, with maybe some gently edited Alicia Keys for the soundtrack.

Instead, they do the actual adults-over-25 thing, and go to bed. 

Or go to couch/floor, since there’s not exactly _one_ bed so much as _none_ bed. But – and Dean can’t emphasize this enough – there is a _really fucking solid_ makeout session first, some A+ Fooling Around considering the constraints they’re operating under: there’s only one spare pair of pants between them, nary an ( _un_ expired, god fucking _dammit_ ) condom to be found and the couch is currently too disgusting to get naked on even by Dean’s frankly saddening standards, but not quite disgusting enough to give a Viking funeral by way of jizz. He logs the first few minutes of what he’d _hoped_ would be a restrained but thorough stress-test on the technical properties of purple jersey genie pants when his head starts pounding ominously and Castiel makes him stop and get a glass of water. The Sanskrit name for Dean’s form on his walk to the kitchen is probably Engorged Crab.

One nice thing about getting older (item 2, in a list of 2, after “cheaper car insurance”) is that instead of all this being _absolutely agonizing_ , it’s just…kind of funny. One of them is maybe legally a glorified minor and the other can fit 75% of his life in a large Tupperware at the bottom of his brother’s coat closet –– but, barring a zombie uprising, nobody’s parents are going to walk in and start yelling. Nobody’s about to leave town to follow Phish or go to college. Nobody’s going to meet somebody hotter or cooler or wetter at the club tomorrow. Nobody’s got the hairpin refractory period that means they’re missing out on a Night of A Thousand Orgasms. It’s kind of messed up how, the closer you get to the grave, the more time you realize you have. At least for some stuff.

So instead of a some triumphant soft-porn montage, Dean just throws the back cushions down on the floor, and they squabble a bit over who’s going to martyr themselves on the floor, and Dean is asleep (on the couch) before he has time to think anything more coherent than: _Om, motherfucker._

* * *

He wakes up at There Is No God o’Clock, when the room is just light enough for him to tell that Cas isn’t there. Maybe he really is doing naked sun salutations to greet the dawn, in which case Dean definitely wants to see what the dick protocol is (proto-cock-ol? Nope, too big of a reach, too early for the attempt). 

Or probably he’s just peeing.

Dean isn’t worried that Castiel has left. Not that he’s ever actually experienced the note-on-the-pillow thing or the don’t-call-me-I’ll-call-you – but Dean usually tries to beat people to it, to save everybody a half hour of awkwardness over freezer-burned Eggos. Dean would choke down a thousand awkward prehistoric Eggos with this weirdo, just to find out how he holds a fork.

* * *

He shuffles out into the kitchen – there’s water running somewhere, but it’s dark in here, and the dishwasher’s currently disconnected for the crime of being a gross piece of shit, so it’s gotta be the master bath. He wanders down the hallway, past the light-damage craters left by dress uniform photos and kindergarten report cards, Zeppelin concert posters, a German shepherd calendar from the last year Dean wore boot-cut jeans.

The bathroom door’s open, but the shower’s running, and the lights are off, which is a combination that Dean really can’t puzzle through at this hour, so he just trundles in and bats the curtain back so he can kill the tap.

The bathtub yelps, so Dean yelps, then apparently everybody’s all yelped out so he actually looks down to see Castiel sitting there, fully clothed, somewhere way North of _sopping wet_ but still just South of _technically drowned_.

“Did you know there’s no hot water?” Castiel asks him, through clenched teeth lips that blue enough to be a little too matchy-matchy with the eyeballs.

“Tankless is backlisted,” says Dean, officially the least helpful man on earth. “What the fuck, dude, are you okay?” and cranks the water off.

“Oh, not really,” Castiel says, in a brittle-sounding swing at casual.

“Jesus, how long have you been in here?”

“Mmn, a…while.” Now that the water’s not hitting him, he’s openly shivering. The guy is solidly built but there’s absolutely zero padding on there, so what are the numbers on hypothermia? It’s just a wall-mount shower head, though, not the goddamn North Atlantic.

Dean claws open the cabinet under the sink, pulls out the one manky beach towel he’s kept in there for mopping up. He holds it out for Cas but the dude just stares at it, like a rabbit who’s been handed a graphing calculator.

“Dude, are you having some kind of episode, here? Do I need to call…somebody?”

“No,” he says.

“Okay,” says Dean. “Awesome.” He holds the towel out a few inches further.

Nobody moves.

Dean gives up and drapes the towel around Castiel’s hunched shoulders.

“You should go,” Cas says.

“Uh. This is _my_ house, buddy.” (Well, it _will_ be, or at least 50% of it, assuming Dad’s estate ever finishes digesting through the Sarlacc pit that is probate.)

Castiel shakes his head, vigorously enough to send water droplets whizzing around the bathroom.“You should leave the bathroom. Before I dry off.”

“Wh–” Dean starts, and then he stands right the fuck up and backs the fuck out of the room, and the fuck down the hallway, and then the fuck out the front door to the porch. Then the fuck back into the house, the fuck into the living room to get the fuck out of his cellphone, then the fuck back out. He bashes his way through the contacts list and rings through, sitting on the line for eighteen zillion garble-y fake rings before Garth finally picks up.

“Dean! Howdy brother, how’s that noggin? You need a lift?”

“No, uh,” Dean says. What does his voice even sound like to other people? “Hi. I’m okay, actually, but I think. Uh. Castiel is in heat?” He uptalks the last sentence like he's a goddamn tween.

There’s a little silence and Dean pulls the phone away from his face to make sure the call hasn’t dropped because even his insultingly expensive carrier can’t be bothered with this dead-end road. Of course that's the moment Garth says something in a tinny little voice, so Dean slaps the phone back against his ear. “Sorry, _sorry,_ what was that?” he says.

“Ope, that’s okay, amigo. I just said, _aw, hell._ ”

Yeah. That works.


End file.
